This article deepens critique of the Africa rising trope and the policies promoted by neo liberals to promote development on the continent. It revisits the economic growth literature and it shows how the weakly formulated views about African growth are merely self serving of limited, mostly western, investment interests that remain centred on extractive economies rather than helping to promote sustainable structural transformation with added value that can be retained in Africa. There have always been periods of economic growth in Africa but opportunities for this to be sustained do not lie with greater integration with the world economy. Instead they lie with, among other things, local political and economic struggles in Africa for greater democratic control of capital accumulation. KEYWORDS: AFRICA; POVERTY; UNDERDEVELOPMENT; INDUSTRIALISATION

Commencing with Namibia in a series of 14 SADC (Southern Africa Development Community), the purpose of this paper is to determined if there are deliberate policy deliberations in response to the 2008/9 Global Financial meltdown evidenced by real macro-economic growth since then, masked behind the popular Africa Rising mantra. Secondly, the paper seeks to measure such entrepreneurial activities growth among local populations since 2009. Finally, the research would seek to identify critical success factors or enablers to the Rise in Africa in terms of threats and opportunities that can compromise or sustain such growth. A retrospective longitudinal (2009-2013) research approach was adopted, and for this first series, documentary data was collected from purposely selected informed sources within Namibia using a predominantly quantitative survey data collection instrument. A simple excel-based descriptive data analysis further provides indicators of risks and opportunities that may determine the success and sustainability of historical economic 'Africa Rising' growth patterns. Due to declining HI prevalence (8% in 2009 to 7.5% in 2013), and a drop in the prime lending rate from 11.12 (2009) to 8.29 (2013), Namibia recorded an increase in life expectancy at birth from 61 to 64, an increase in the per-capita income from US$8500.00 (2009) to US$12500.00 (2013), and an improved quality of life marked by a growth from 0.6HDI (2009) to 0.624 (2013). However, the research finds that this positive outlook remains threatened by a widening wealth gap, corruption and declining global competitiveness that jumped from 4.03 out of 7 in 2009 to 3.8 out of 7 by 2013. These findings imply that if African governments can uphold their protracted fight against HIV, fight corruption, close the widening wealth gap and good governance, the continent and its people stand a great chance of living the true meaning of Africa Rising where wealth can be created through increased entrepreneurial activities in which citizens are active participants, not spectators. With that, poverty can be eradicated in record time than envisaged.

Debating the current socio-economic conditions and future prospects for the African continent has become a regular activity in boardrooms and international conference centres. At the beginning of this century, such debates still centred on a grand narrative that portrayed Africa as a largely hopeless continent. The predominant image was that of an impoverished child facing a bleak future due to political instability, aid dependency and kleptocratic elites stashing their stolen riches in Swiss bank accounts. Over the course of only a few years, the narrative has radically changed. Today, international consulting firms and popular economic journals constantly remind us that Africa is “on the rise”. Those euphoric about the continent’s future point to the fact that the region is harbouring a number of the world’s fastest growing economies, thanks not only to historic highs in international commodity prices but also to improvements in macro- and microeconomic policy in many countries that have made it easier to invest. However, much like the story of “hopeless Africa”, the “Africa rising” narrative often appears to be emotive and one-dimensional. Its focus on broad-gauge measures of economic growth such as gross domestic product (GDP) glosses over the mixed experiences of the real – or perceived – progress that has been achieved over the last decade. Questions about the social, political and environmental sustainability of the continent’s current development trajectories, and who benefits from them, often remain ignored.

This policy brief looks at policy options that can facilitate Africa's convergence, catching up and leapfrogging using industrial policy instruments in the post-Great Recession period. During 1990-1999 the development policies recommendations shifted from the state to the market, from import substitutions to outward-oriented policies, from price controls to 'getting the price right'. 1 Africa had withstood both the Y2K and the subsequent dotcom bust. The upward movement in commodity prices during 2001-2007 was accompanied by massive capital inflows into the continent. The capital inflows continued after the crisis, chasing growth and better yields in Africa as a result of the Great Recession in the developed world. The capital inflows went into a variety of sectors including commodities, information technology and telecommunications, as well as financial services and retail. The United States (US) government and the European Union (EU) and its member countries embarked on the most aggressive fiscal and monetary policy deployment in history during the crisis 2. In Africa, during the period before and after the crisis, a debate ensued among scholars and others as to whether Africa could converge, catch up and leapfrog the rest of the developing world. If so, what policies could support the necessary structural change?