Sub-Saharan Africa Country Analysis

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In 2000, there were over 665 million people living in Sub-Saharan African countries (U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division), which is on average 28 persons per square kilometre. The most populous countries are Mauritius (584 persons per sqd km. in 2000) Rwanda and Burundi (337 persons and 266 persons per sqd km. in
2000 respectively). The lowest population densities can be found in Namibia,
Mauritania and Botswana (2,3 persons, 2,4 persons and 2,9 persons per sqd km in
2000 respectively). Furthermore, Africa is both linguistically and ethnically the most diverse continent in the world. In the words of Frederick Cooper (2002): ‘Africans are as different from each other as they are from anybody else (Cooper, 2002:12; see also Manning, 1990:25). This
…show more content…
There are countries that experienced over 2.5% growth on average for 50 years, and there are countries that are actually worse off than they were 25 years ago. In half of the countries, income per capita is over 1,000 international dollars per annum at the end of the previous century.
The distinct place in terms of development Africa occupies in the world, and the variability of growth experiences on the continent merits an analysis of economic and institutional development in an African sample. This thesis will do so by taking a historical approach. We try to asses the impact of initial conditions on development paths in later times. Initial conditions, i.e. the situation present before or at the beginning of the period under analysis, can be thought of as a spectrum, from factors that are plausibly exogenous to factors that are the results of previous policies
(Temple 1998). Many studies include initial conditions in growth analyses, such as the geographical situation, the availability of resource endowments, ethnic diversity, capital stocks, technological environment and social capability (Sachs and Warner
1997; Easterly and Levine 1997; Abramovitz 1986). In the convergence literature

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