IF ANYTHING explains the poverty in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, it is not an unwillingness to work hard—most of the continent’s people still sweat to survive tilling fields with medieval tools. Nor is it because of a lack of enterprise and optimism: on the permanently traffic-jammed streets of Lagos, Nigeria’s main commercial city, hawkers gingerly ease their way between cars trying to sell almost anything from snacks to books, pirated DVDs and even toilet seats. Africans are far more likely to be self-employed than people in richer parts of the world, for the simple reason that without social safety nets, many of them must hustle or starve.
Yet for all Africans’ energy and ingenuity, the region struggles to produce enough of the productive and profitable small businesses it needs to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The World Bank reckons that sub-Saharan Africa has only a quarter as many small businesses as Asia, relative to its population. Members of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, have about eight times as many formal small businesses per person.
Part of this is explained by the poor climate for...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/29i5jGn
EmoticonEmoticon