Dynamic Africa
To Macky Sall, president of the Republic of Senegal, Africa is “the continent of the future” — a vast landscape of youthfulness, enterprise, and resources on the verge of exercising its potential. Sall on Friday delivered the keynote address at the fourth annual Harvard African Development Conference, a multi-School, student-run event that draws experts and scholars — 350 this year — from around the world. His view was followed by a range of others — part optimism, part reality check — when participants turned Saturday to micro-scale messages related to this year’s theme: visible change, one innovation at a time. “The change in Africa is palpable,” said Antoinette Sayeh, director of the International Monetary Fund’s African Department, which tracks development in 45 sub-Saharan African countries. Five percent annual growth rates are the norm now, she said; debt-to-GDP ratios are shrinking, inflation is typically in the single digits, and poverty rates are falling....