Sub-Saharan Africa’s recent economic boom has raised hopes and expectations to lift the regions’ ‘bottom millions’ out of poverty by 2030. How realistic is that goal? We approach this question by comparing the experiences of three front-runners of region-specific development trajectories – Britain’s capital-intensive, Japan’s labour-intensive, and Ghana’s land-extensive growth path –, highlighting some historical analogies that are relevant for, but often overlooked in the current ‘Africa rising’ debate. We draw particular attention to Africa’s demographic boom and the possibilities of a transition to labour-intensive export-led industrialization. Although our exercise in diachronic comparative history offers little hope for poverty eradication by 2030, we do see broadened opportunities for sustained African economic growth in the longer-term.

中文翻译：

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非洲崛起？历史视角

撒哈拉以南非洲最近的经济繁荣带来了到 2030 年使该地区“底层数百万人”摆脱贫困的希望和期望。这个目标有多现实？我们通过比较特定区域发展轨迹的三个领跑者——英国的资本密集型、日本的劳动密集型和加纳的土地扩张型增长路径——的经验来解决这个问题，强调一些与此相关但经常发生的历史类比。在当前的“非洲崛起”辩论中被忽视了。我们特别提请注意非洲的人口繁荣以及向劳动密集型出口导向型工业化转型的可能性。尽管我们对历时比较历史的研究对到 2030 年消除贫困的希望不大，但我们确实看到非洲经济长期持续增长的机会有所扩大。