The continent epitomises destitution, its images commonly used by media and charity organisations to depict human want and suffering. This is calculated by adding up the amount of money spent on a country's final output of goods and services or by totalling the income of all its citizens, including the income from factors of production used abroad. The measure of progress, or lack of it, is indicated by GNP growth rates, i.e., the percentage change in GNP over a period of time, usually a year. The average income of a country's citizens is contained in the GNP per capita, which is the GNP divided by the population. Governments everywhere judge their performance by changes in economic growth rates, congratulating themselves when they achieve or surpass their GDP growth targets.
African nations are many decades behind developed nations.
This means that industrialised countries are roughly 51 times wealthier than African nations. At an annual growth rate of three percent it would take Africa about 120 years to reach today's level of wealth of the West. Of course, western nations are unlikely to stand still in the 21 st century, so, it seems that African societies striving to catch up with the west have an impossible mission. These are questions that all who are concerned with development in Africa should seriously ponder. In recent decades some people have challenged the importance of economic growth, the foundation of classical and orthodox economics, with its roots in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century.