Africa has robust growth, and the region’s economic prospects remain good. GDP per capita has expanded at 2.4 percent per year, good for an average increase in GDP per capita of 50 percent since 1996.

But the averages also hide a substantial degree of variation. For example, GDP per capita in resource-rich countries grew 2.2 times faster during 1996-2011 than in resource-poor countries.

Despite the better growth performance, poverty declined substantially less in resource-rich countries. Fast growth has also been recorded in resource-poor countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Most importantly, the youth bulge will need to be absorbed in productive jobs. Migration out of agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns appears more conducive to faster poverty reduction.

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Recent years have seen a growing interest on taxation in developing countries among aid agencies. This reflects a concern for raising domestic revenues to finance public goods and services.

It also represents a recognition of the centrality of taxation for growth and redistribution. However, efforts to broaden the tax base are intimately connected to the quality of government expenditure.

Aid to taxation can be grouped into three broad working areas: (1) strengthen tax policy and design; (2) build more effective tax administrations; and (3) encourage constructive state-society engagement around taxes.

This article discusses experiences with donor support to strengthen tax systems in developing countries and challenges in scaling up donor efforts, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

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A new dynamic stage has been reached in the debate on social protection and cash transfer programs, both internationally and on the African scene.

These issues are likely to figure more prominently in connection with the on-going discussions about the new multilateral development goals beyond 2015.

In Africa the debate has also been influenced by the current dilemma: high economic growth rates in many African countries, but persistent poverty and widening income gaps.

Stronger African action at the political leadership levels is needed with increased willingness to embark on concrete programs in cooperation with civil society.

Aid agencies need to take a stronger interest in cash transfers as a means to fight poverty. Sweden has a legacy of being in the forefront regarding social protection systems.

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Land is a big deal for Oxfam. Last year we published Risky Business, looking at the explosion in channelling development finance to private sector businesses via Financial Intermediaries.

We worried that such poorly governed financing was fuelling land grabs and involved some worrying characteristics – opacity, complexity, and focus on financial returns over development impact.

Since then a lot has happened. Oxfam has been asking the World Bank to freeze its large agriculture investments until it puts in place measures to tackle the threat of land grabs.

Looks like we have two very different World Banks on land grabs. So who do we believe, Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde? In terms of hard cash, the IFC increasingly dominates.

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Africa must reverse the economic quagmire of the past decades by focusing on industrialisation as a necessary path towards sustained wealth creation for an emerging Africa.

There is no other road to successful, sustainable and inclusive structural transformation that can lift African peoples out of the poverty they have endured for almost half a century.

African policy makers agree on the need for an ambitious structural transformation of the economy, and this will only be done through focused and strong industrialisation.

Partnerships with other countries will be inevitable, although we can expect different dynamics. Working with external partners will necessitate a paradigm shift in mindsets.

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Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease are perhaps the best known novels not only to emerge from Africa but the entire world. The author of these classic works which embodied a clear anti-colonial theme, Chinua Achebe, passed away on March 21 in Boston.

Achebe will be remembered for his literary contributions and his fierce criticism of colonial and post-colonial African society. His books will remain a mainstay of libraries and classrooms for many generations to come.

Nigeria today has still not overcome the legacy of imperialism. Despite its vast oil wealth, there is profound inequality within the country. In order for real development to occur in Nigeria, there must be a break with the imperialist and neo-colonialist economic and political models.

There has to be a national program for the reconstruction of the country based upon the interests of the workers, farmers and youth of the country and this effort must be linked with the broader struggle throughout Africa and the world.

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As 2015 approaches, the results of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are being analysed. But many are already looking further, beyond the magic date of 2015.

Just over a week ago, the Pan-African Parliament hosted an African thematic consultation on Governance and the post-2015 Development Agenda in South Africa. It was a lively African driven debate, highlighting key African concerns and expectations for a new and more inclusive and sustainable global development framework.

Clearly, the African continent does not any longer want to undergo agendas that are designed elsewhere. Many Africans seem to be committed more than ever to reduce aid dependency and to build alliances for change with all types of new partners on their own terms.

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Development planning has a long and chequered history in Africa; our development trajectory has been influenced by various approaches to development planning since the early stages of independence.

National Development Strategies (NDS) have now gone beyond the narrow objective of poverty reduction to encompass accelerated growth, employment creation, structural transformation and sustainable development.

ECA has developed a network of development planners which includes an electronic platform that will serve as a repository of literature current research related to development planning.

Africa must continue to plan its development, increase policy space, and make prudent decisions about the appropriate strategies needed to achieve economic growth and structural transformation.

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Small firms are big business in the aid industry. Why? In a word, jobs. Globally, small and medium firms account for nearly 80 per cent of employment in the formal sector in low-income countries.

When micro and informal firms are counted, the employment share of micro- small and medium enterprises in developing countries rises to an estimated 90 per cent of all workers.

Aid should target those firms that are successful at creating ‘better’ jobs. These are growing firms, and this argues in the first instance for policies and programmes that reduce the constraints to the growth of firms, regardless of size.

Too much donor effort has been expended on achieving easily measured but low impact regulatory reforms and too little effort on relieving an important physical constraint to firm growth―lack of infrastructure.

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Are the days of gloating about Africa’s rise behind us? In the current debate about the continent’s growth performance – ‘myth or reality?’ – one crucial issue gets surprisingly little attention: employment.

The big picture is clear, and disappointing: Africa’s growth in the last ten years has failed to translate into enough jobs. Even this high growth did not create more jobs than much weaker growth in the 1990s.

Young Africans in particular cannot find productive and remunerative work. With 10-12 million more young people seeking work every year, job growth has to be much stronger to make a dent in unemployment.

Africa’s capacity to offer opportunities to its younger generation has been falling short of its demographic dynamism. The strong growth has been achieved without transforming African economies.

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