According to the chief economist of the World Bank for the region, entrenched inequality has been identified as a major barrier to economic progress in Africa.

In an interview with Citi TV’s The Point of View, Andrew Dabalen identified two major barriers to growth: a dearth of vital infrastructure and a restricted amount of intra-African trade.

“The speed at which Africa’s growth reduces poverty is only half than what we see in the rest of the world. East Asia is much higher. One of the major reasons for that is what we call structural inequalities in this report.

“There are many reasons why Africa’s growth is low, part of it is that we don’t have infrastructure in terms of energy, water and sanitation, and we don’t really trade a lot with each other.

“We have lots of shocks from either commodity prices, conflict or climate disasters. One of the important determinants of this low growth and this ability of low growth to convert to poverty reduction is inequality and structural inequality.

“They are inequalities because of circumstances an individual cannot control. You don’t have control over where you were born and who you were born to, your skin colour, or the fact that you are a man or a woman. These circumstances that you are born into account for almost 70% of all the differences you see between children’s access to education, health or nutrition.

“That is what we call structural, it’s not something you can change with your ability or something that the market can correct, it requires social policy action,” he told host Bernard Avle.

A few projections for Africa were included in the World Bank’s Africa Pulse Report for April 2024. Despite predictions of higher economic activity, it predicted a slowdown in Ghana’s economic growth in 2024.