Towards high quality growth and structural transformation in the Eastern Africa Region : tracking progress on macroeconomic and social developments in the Eastern Africa region 2012-13

Abstract

Given the difficult global context, the continued resilience of economic growth in the Eastern Africa region has been quite remarkable. But this strong performance has increasingly been accompanied by growing (and sometimes quite vocal) concerns over the quality of the growth –particularly the extent to which growth has been conducive to broad-based poverty reduction and employment creation. This report focuses particularly on the issue of insufficient ‘structural transformation’, meaning a shift towards high income generating activities, and away from a traditional dependence on the production of commodities and unprocessed goods. In policy circles, discussion about the importance of achieving ‘structural transformation’ has become commonplace. In the Eastern Africa region, countries are confronting a number of major economic challenges accelerating processes of urbanisation, population pressures, and high degrees of income inequality. With a combination of original analytical research and a review of the available empirical evidence, this report attempts to clarify some of the nature of these challenges and suggest why the region needs to put ‘quality first’ across the whole panoply of development policies.