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Despite a greater emerging correlation with growth rates of the world economy and major players like the US and China, SSA is far from realising the true extent of its economic potential, with the least average annual per capita GDP growth of 0.7% over the past half a century. With liberalisation and increased financial integration with the world markets over the decades (1965–2016), the African economies are influenced more significantly by international factors than before, and this brings with itself a fair share of both advantages and pitfalls.

SSA’s share of exports in GDP (XGS), while high, has increased the slowest out of all regions and the burgeoning importance of remittances has failed to prevent the deterioration of the current account balance. The savings rate in SSA remains lower than the level attained in the 1970s, leaving the region vulnerable to the vagaries of the current account balance; however, the growth projections of 5%, if the current levels of the investment ratio and ICOR hold, lend credence to the expectation that the effective damage to economic growth can be limited.

When it comes to deconstructing the poor performance of the Sub-Saharan African region, an analysis of export orientation indicates that the inability of the manufactures-exporting economies to be competitive in the world market (specifically, the presence of several small suppliers as opposed to single large suppliers like China and India) could be a potential reason for their lacklustre growth. While the exporters of agricultural commodities and ores have managed to maintain a favourable position, there is still a gap vis-à-vis Latin American countries with comparable export baskets. Given the general evidence of a greater increase in share of XGS and GFCF for SSA, it is reasonable to expect that this gap can be bridged to an extent. For ser vices, groups other than manufactures and ores exporters do poorly both in the share of service exports in GDP and in the share of IT-related exports in ser vice exports.

The growth patterns of SSA and Latin American economies are closely tied to the state of the world economy and as such the time is opportune to work for the overall recovery of the latter with specific focus on the requirements of the former. Re-establishing the importance of constructive aid, opening channels for larger private financial flows and strengthening the negotiating power of such regions within international organisations such as the World Bank and IMF are necessary to bolster the lagging growth. Furthermore, provision of greater soft aid would help to raise investment rates and subsequently increase growth without a need for prior increase in domestic savings. Actions by the G20 that would increase world growth provide more appropriate balance of payments financing without onerous conditionality and more soft aid would help increase growth rates in SSA which would further the achievement of the goals of sustainable development.