Does China’s Economic Transformation Have Lessons for Africa?

The China-DAC Study Group, which was established jointly by the International Poverty Reduction Center in China and OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, published in August a summary of its findings titled “Economic Transformation and Poverty Reduction: How It Happened in China, Helping It Happen in Africa."

Flickr/Tine Steiss

The primary findings were:

(1) China’s experience shows that rapid economic and social development in poor countries can happen, in a context of globalization, when strong development-oriented leadership emerges, focused on development performance rather than on entrenched policies and interests. This requires the articulation of a national project for economic transformation within a generation that motivates people across the country in a new national consensus.

(2) As in the case of China’s economic transformation, international assistance can support and speed up Africa’s transformation and poverty reduction process when conceived and designed in this transformational framework.

The report also suggests what China can do further to enhance development in Africa, what OECD/DAC members can do and what Africans can learn from the Chinese experience.

The complete study is available here.