Johannesburg - A decade of economic growth averaging 5.4% has Africa's economies expanding fast enough to "put a dent" in poverty, the World Bank said in a report.
More investment is needed to sustain the development, it said, noting 60.5% of all foreign direct investment went to oil-exporting countries.
South Africa and Nigeria accounted for more than half of sub-Saharan Africa's gross domestic product.
"Africa has learnt to trade more effectively with the rest of the world, to rely more on the private sector, and to avoid the very serious collapses in economic growth that
characterised the 1970s, 1980s and even the early 1990s," said John Page, the bank's chief economist for Africa.
Significant growth
In 2005, the last year for which African Development Indicators 2007 quotes data, performance varied from a 2.2% loss in politically turbulent Zimbabwe - the only country to post a negative growth - to 30.8% in oil-producing Equatorial Guinea.
Nine countries posted growth rates of near or above the 7% threshold considered necessary to reduce poverty on a sustained level.
The report, released Wednesday, says many economies are growing fast enough "to put a dent on the region's high poverty rate and attract global investment."
The bank divided sub-Saharan countries into three categories.
Growth was nearly 7% in the fastest-growing group, comprising the seven major petroleum exporters, boosted by high oil prices and home to 27.7% of the region's population.
The second group of 18 resource-poor countries, home to 35.6% of the population, showed diversified and sustained growth of at least 4%.
The slowest growing economies, 17 countries with the largest share of 36.7% of the population, lacked natural resources, were volatile and suffering or emerging from conflict, or just trapped in slow growth of less than 4%.
A decade of reforms
The report credited a decade of reforms that have made inflation, budget deficits, exchange rates and foreign debt repayments more manageable.
It said economies were more open to trade and private enterprise, governance was improving and there had been more assaults on corruption, which still bedevils much of the continent.
Africa has become a better bet for investors, it said. Overall, investments in Africa increased from 16.8% of gross domestic product in 2000 to 19.5% of GDP in 2006.
While the continent's growth rate rivaled, and sometimes bettered, that of strong developed economies, African countries struggled to compete on a global level because of an infrastructure gap and levels of indirect costs that were two to three times as high as those in competing economies in Asia, Page said.
Indirect costs of exporting from Africa - some 18% to 35% of total costs - were exorbitant compared to exporting from China - 8% of total costs, the report said.
Despite such obstacles, African exports grew by over 11% between 2003 and 2006, according to the report.
Still, more than 40% of the people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than US$1 a day, life expectancy gains had stalled in some countries and retreated in others, and poor health and poor schooling held back improvements in peoples productivity.
- AP