Why the rise of Africa is inevitable

The NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies hosted a talk by the award-winning British economist Charlie Robertson where he looked at 300 years of economic development and predicted which African countries are likely to boom in the next few decades. He identified education, electricity access and fertility rates as the determining factors and made his conclusions based on a key econometric data. The trends of African growth, he said, are likely to follow that of Asia. No industrialisation can happen with less than 70% literacy. He argued for reduced fertility rates saying the sweet spot for sustained GDP growth is when there are 2.5 working age adults for every child and when median population hits 25-35 years of age. According to Charlie, Africa has hit that sweet spot, for most part but fertility rates still need to come down. That will generate savings, which will boost investments and thus create more jobs and economic growth. The seminar was attended by 40 participants. It was followed by a networking evening.

Charlie Robertson is the head of macro strategy at FIM Partners, a London-based hedgefund and the author of The Time Travelling Economist.