“Africa has less inequality than India”
Post by: Michael Connellan
I attended an enlightening talk hosted by Schumacher Centre yesterday (September 24) by Jean-Joseph Boillot, an internationally renowned economist.
Dr Boillot has advised the French Ministry of Finance, and is an expert on EU-India economic relations. His talk, held at Delhi’s India International Centre, sought to question some widely held beliefs about India’s development in relation to ‘rivals’ such as China.
Claiming that the meteoric predictions for China’s future economy were hyped, Dr Boillot argued that Africa will emerge as a major rival to India in the world economy.
He said: “Africa cannot be discounted. Africa today is in a better situation than China in 1980, just before China’s take-off. India’s population is increasing. But it is Africa’s population which is growing most rapidly as a percentage of world population. China is ageing.”
Dr Boillot argued that African societies have less inequality compared to India because of differences in social structures. He also claimed that African nations are threatening to steal away India’s call centre industry – credited with lifting many into the middle classes.
China is certainly an intimidating neighbour for India – militarily, politically and economically. The unnerving fact for any democrat is that communist China, in recent decades, has been much more successful in lifting millions of its populace out of poverty than democratic India. But Boillot claims that China’s economy will “mature,” rather than continue its exceptional year-on-year growth. The picture he paints of a future Africa rising to rival India’s role in the world economy is a fascinating one.
The central focus of Dr Boillot’s presentation was actually the economic relationship between the EU and India. He identified the problems that restricted this relationship, and how these problems could be overcome.
It can be viewed below: