Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1885-2008: Evidence from Eight Countries

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been absent from recent debates about comparative long-run growth owing to the lack of data on aggregate economic performance before 1950. This paper provides estimates of GDP per capita on an annual basis for eight Anglophone African economies for the period since 1885, raising new questions about previous characterizations of the region’s economic performance. The new data show that many of these economies had levels of per capita income which were above subsistence by the early twentieth century, on a par with the largest economies in Asia until the 1980s. However, overall improvements in GDP per capita were limited by episodes of negative growth or “shrinking”, the scale and scope of which can be measured through annual data.

由于1950年前缺乏总体经济表现数据，撒哈拉以南非洲（Sub-Saharan Africa, SSA）长期缺席于近期有关长期比较增长的学术讨论中。本文针对1885年以来的时段，为8个英语非洲经济体提供了年度人均国内生产总值（GDP per capita）估算值，这为学界重新审视该区域此前的经济表现定性带来了新的研究议题。新数据显示，其中多数经济体在20世纪早期的人均收入水平已高于生存线，且直至20世纪80年代，其人均收入水平仍与亚洲主要经济体不相上下。然而，人均GDP的整体增长仍受负增长或“经济收缩”阶段的制约，而这些阶段的规模与范围可通过年度数据得以量化。