By IPS Correspondents
ABIDJAN, May 29 1998 (IPS)

More countries in Africa have been registering positive economic growth rates, even though the continent still has much ground to cover on the social and economic planes, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).

“Only six countries on the continent registered negative economic growth in 1997 as compared to 17 in 1990 for example,” said the Bank in its 1998 African Development Report, released Thursday at the AfDB’s annual board of governors meeting, held here on May 27-29.

This reduction, it explained, is linked to macro-economic reforms that reduced the continent’s average fiscal deficit from 5.4 percent of GDP in 1994 to a historic low of 1.9 percent in 1997.

The report noted that 37 countries recorded fiscal deficits of less than 5 percent, while average inflation fell from a peak of 40 percent in 1994 to 17.6 percent in 1997.

“The median inflation rate in 1997 was 5.7 percent, indicating that about half of the 53 African countries enjoyed inflation rates below this figure,” the report indicated.

African economies have remained on a recovery path marked by three years of GDP expansion averaging 3.8 percent in 1995-97, which is more than double the average growth in 1990-1994, it noted.

“Over the past three years, the average (GDP) growth rate surpassed average population growth of 2.8 percent, yielding modest gains in income per capita, in contrast to the persistent decline in the first four years of the decade,” said the report.

According to the document, the value of Africa’s exports increased by 6.2 percent last year, resulting in a trade surplus which helped to contain the continent’s current account deficit at 1.2 percent of GDP.

However, the report stressed that Africa’s external debt remained a major constraint on investments and growth. “In 1997, the stock of debt stood at 315.2 billion dollars, with debt service obligations absorbing, on average, about one-fifth of export earnings,” it said.

The AfDB expects macro-economic gains to continue beyond this year with real GDP growing by 4 to 5 percent. But it warned that the continued weakening of commodity prices, the knock-on effects of the Asian crisis and social conflicts in some countries could undermine projected growth.

“Recent recovery remains inadequate given the average per capita income of just 665 U.S. dollars, which is only 75 percent of that of 1980,” noted the report.

It added that, “with some 45 percent of the population living in abject poverty, Africa’s economy must grow at 7 percent per annum over the next decades to double present per capita incomes and arrest and reverse the incidence of poverty.”

Efforts to reduce poverty need to be reinforced with human capital development to attain goals such as universal education, a two-thirds reduction of the under-5 mortality rate and universal access to reproductive health services by the year 2015, it added.

The AfDB said the poor’s most significant asset was their labour and one of the most effective ways to improve their welfare was to increase job opportunities and the productivity of their labour through investment in education, health and nutrition.

Africa has improved its scores in some of these areas over the past three to four decades, according to the AfDB.

“Post-independence strides in human capital development during 1960-95 were marked by an increase in life expectancy at birth from 40 to over 53, and a significant decline in infant mortality from 168 to 89 per 1,000 live births,” the report pointed out. Primary and secondary school enrolment, it said, rose from 43 to 78 percent, and from 5 to 31 percent respectively.

However, social indicators, particularly among women and children, remain among the worst in the world.

“One in six children die before the age of five, while maternal mortality rates are up to 1,600 per 100,000 live births in some cases,” said the report. “Also, HIV-AIDS has emerged as a major health hazard.”

The report suggests a broad policy agenda in Africa for human development in education and health which, it stressed, are priority concerns for the AfDB and its overarching objective of achieving broad-based economic growth and reducing poverty.

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