About the Africa Growth Initiative

Global Economy and Development launched the Africa Growth Initiative in September 2008 to build leading research capacity on economic and developmental policy solutions in Africa. The Initiative establishes an integrated program that combines incisive, rigorous academic research with long-term partnerships with Africa’s thought leaders and emerging policy experts to address issues of growth and development on the continent.

After three decades of low and volatile growth, economic performance in Africa has markedly improved. Since 1994, average economic growth has been close to 5 percent per year, and today Africa’s income per capita is rising in tandem with the rest of the world. Africa’s current success may be attributed to resource driven growth booms, but private sector and governance reforms have also been important catalysts of development. Africa’s current challenge is to sustain growth through continued institutional and policy reforms that appropriately channel aid and investments into successful development efforts. Brookings’s Africa Growth Initiative seeks to work with Africa’s experts, leaders and policy institutes as they search for the most effective way forward to take advantage of this new climate of opportunity.

Brookings also aims to establish institutional relationships with Africa-based research organizations, to develop a network of partners in Africa with whom Brookings may pursue joint projects. These efforts are specifically designed to create strong and sustained African research capacity at Brookings and in the Washington, D.C.-based policy community, to inform and support African development.

Key research areas under the umbrella of the Initiative include work on enterprise and growth, governance, an annual forum on African economic issues, health policy studies and research on regional private sector development and aid effectiveness.