But it will require a serious rethink in a spirit of open dialogue and pragmatism. Essential to any African growth story must be the emergence of a domestic entrepreneurial class reinvesting its savings in productive domestic sectors. Two decades of structural adjustment have taught that this does not follow from getting prices right if physical and human infrastructure gaps limit supply responses. More efficient institutional capacities are essential and more public investment will be needed. Private flows today represent less than 2 per cent of GDP for the region - half the average for other developing countries.
Experience shows that private capital flows lag rather than lead growth.
Such inflows have also become much less productive than in the past. In the 1990s, almost 40 per cent were transferred back to creditor countries as interest payments and profit remittances. Furthermore, aid is highly unevenly distributed among countries at similar levels of development. Aid to Africa since the early 1980s has barely compensated for the resource losses resulting from unfavourable trading conditions. Terms of trade losses and loss of market share have persisted over the past 20 years with policy makers across Africa facing the choice between higher trade deficits or import compression.