Why is the economy of most african countries been stagnant for the past 10 years?

Question

Why is the economy of most african countries been stagnant for the past 10 years?

Answer 1

Probably due to the political instabilities.

Answer 2

Unfortunately many African nations inherited political structures and economic from European colonial powers.

Many Colonial powers such as France, Britain, Belgium, German created arbitrary political units in Africa that bore no relevance to the social, cultural or economic status of the people within.

As a result many African countries have had absurd political and economic handicaps emplaced upon them.

For example, imagine if you will, a foreign power coming to Europe in the early 19th century and saying, "OK, we are going to take a part of France and a part of Germany and a part of Holland and call it "Mixedup country", and by the way we want all you people living in "Mixedup country" to grow, ummm rice, yeah rice sounds good and we want you to sell this product only to us."

Then the people of "Mixedup country" fight back and gain their independence only to find that they actually speak three different languages, have three distinctive cultures and they all grow freaking rice!

Thats what sort of happened to many African countries.

Its way more complex that the simple example i have given, but I think that foreign interference is primarily to blame.

Answer 3

Military dictatorship. Dictatorial governments want to control all the wealth and leave the ordinary people powerless and poor. Ordinary people cannot own land or property, therefore they have no way to improve their personal wealth by investing or borrowing against assets.

Answer 4

it is difficult for any without proper direction to get out of the situation of stagnation

{including for a developed country}

Answer 5

Many papers have been written on that topic. Accordingly, the answers to that question vary just as much. Among some of the more accepted explanations one could suggest:

- Lack of investment in infrastructure

- Too high dependence on natural resources, allowing small groups to control nearly the entire national output

- Lack of sound legal and financial institutions

- Bad political leadership

- Civil wars (caused by great ethnic heterogeneity)

- "Dutch disease" where a strong depreciation of the local currency leads to a sharp decline in all export level

- Lack of trade among African nations

- High rates of HIV infections (especially in the southern part of Africa)

- Badly managed foreign aid projects

- Brain drain of African intellectuals to the west

Many more reasons can be mentioned. Note however, that the reasons above can be said to have lead to the stagnant performance of African nations not just in the past 10 years but in the post-colonial era in general.