Africa Progress Report 2012

The Africa Progress Panel (APP) has just released the Africa Progress Report 2012. This is a comprehensive report on Africa that covers the following topics: economic growth, poverty, unemployment, economic disparities, demography, global food security, emerging powers, science and technology, multiparty democracy, governance, natural resources, education, foreign direct investment and concessional finance.

The APP consists of 10 distinguished individuals from the private and public sector, who advocate on global issues of importance to Africa and the World. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan chairs the APP and is engaged with it on a day-to-day basis. The Report's purpose is to provide an overview of the progress Africa has made over the previous year. The Panel recommends a series of policy choices and actions for African policy makers.

The Report concludes that the extreme pessimism surrounding Africa a decade ago was unwarranted. So, too, is the current wave of blinkered optimism. Real gains have been made, but governments and their development partners need to reflect on the weaknesses, as well as the strengths, of the recent record - and assess both the risks and the opportunities that lie ahead.

This year's report looks at three of the most critical ingredients for transforming a promising economic upturn into a sustained recovery and lasting human development--jobs, justice and equity. It highlights jobs because livelihoods play such a fundamental role in people's lives and because Africa urgently needs to create jobs for a growing youth population. It highlights justice and equity because they are missing from the lives of too many Africans, making the present growth socially unsustainable.

Click here to read the entire report.