Sub-Saharan Africa by the numbers

Here we have RPI for selected countries for the years 1960, 1980, 2000 and 2010:

(Calculated from World Bank Economic Indicators)

If we look at China's entry, the number "3.2" in the 1960 column means that in 1960 per capita GDP in China, as calculated using 1960 exchange rates and dollars, was 3.2% of America's.

We see that China lost ground relative to the US between 1960 and 1980. Those were the years of catastrophic Maoist rule which included the "Cultural Revolution."

Deng Xiaoping's reform started in the late 1970s and between 1980 and 2010 China advanced rapidly relative to the USA. The 2010 figure of 9.5 is almost certainly an under-estimate since China has followed a policy of keeping its currency under-valued.

This is encouraging. It shows our RPI is a good indicator of trends at least as far as China is concerned.

All countries in the region labelled SE Asia & Pacific with the exception of the Philippines advanced relative to the US in the period 1980 – 2010 albeit some had a few ups and downs along the way. Again, this is broadly what we expect to find.

South Asia is more of a mixed bag with Bangladesh and Pakistan actually losing ground relative to the US between 1980 and 2010.

Now look at Sub-Saharan Africa. Every country in the table for which data is available, with the exception of Uganda, lost ground against the USA between 1980 and 2010. However for most of them the worst seems to have been over by 2000. They made up some lost ground between 2000 and 2010 thanks largely to the commodities boom.

However, here is the real shocker. Look at the column labelled 1960. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe were all somewhat ahead of China and Korea. Starting from roughly equal baselines in 1960 with, if anything, a slight advantage for the African countries, sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia follow radically different trajectories. This is true no matter what metric you use. You may add or subtract countries from the table. You may use different metrics. From 1960 onwards South-East Asia pulls ahead of sub-Saharan Africa and keeps on going.

Note Angola's performance. Its RPI increased almost five-fold between 2000 and 2010. This is almost entirely due to an increase in oil production and a fortuitous rise in oil prices. Around 85% of Angola's GDP is oil-related.