About this ebook
Contributors discuss the measurement of growth, the transformations necessary to sustain it, and issues around equity and well-being. They consider topics such as the distribution of income gains from growth; the extent to which economic growth has resulted in improvements in employment, poverty, and security; structural transformations of the economy and diversification of the sources of growth; environmental sustainability; and management of urbanization. Offering both diagnoses and prescriptions, The Quality of Growth in Africa helps envision a future that goes beyond increasing GDP to ensuring that growth translates into advancements in well-being. Although the book focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, much of the contributors’ incisive analysis has implications for countries outside the region.
About the author
Ravi Kanbur is T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and professor of economics at Cornell University. He has served on the senior staff at the World Bank, including as chief economist for Africa.
Akbar Noman is senior fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and teaches as an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He has worked at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and at senior levels of government. He is coeditor, with Joseph E. Stiglitz, of Efficiency, Finance, and Varieties of Industrial Policy: Guiding Resources, Learning, and Technology for Sustained Growth (Columbia, 2016).
Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University and is founding president of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue. A recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, he is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, a former member and chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, and chair of the international Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. He is the author of Globalization and Its Discontents (2002), The Price of Inequality (2012), Creating a Learning Society (Columbia, 2014, with Bruce Greenwald), and most recently, People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent (2019).
