South Korea has much to teach Africa on how to pull itself out of poverty
African countries have a lot to learn from South Korea’s rapid economic transformation, and agriculture is the fastest way for the continent to industrialise, the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, said on Monday. Among the priority areas of the bank — which has an active portfolio totalling $4.9bn in SA and has funded the Land Bank and Eskom, among others — are infrastructure development, industrialisation and regional integration. According to Adesina, the AfDB was looking to invest $35bn over the next 10 years to support industrialisation on the continent. This equated to $3.5bn a year. "It's not just the amount that we invest that matters, it’s also the amount that we leverage of this. We plan to leverage about $56bn in support of industrialisation in Africa." Adesina said the intention was to improve Africa’s industrial GDP per capita from $700 currently — just a third of that of Latin America and a fifth of Southeast Asia’s. The quickest way to...
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