>But why do you agree with the comment saying real GDP per capita in Africa hasn't increased in the same sentence that you say it has increased (by 1.1% annually)?
Because:
* 1.1% annual growth is a) terrible at any point after c. 1800, and b) sustained over decades (during which bien-pensant commentators repeatedly proclaimed that Africa was about to/already had/surely would grow at enormous speed and soon catch up with the developed world). Comparing it to the industrial revolution-era statistics is meaningless unless the rest of the world is also at that level.
* The data shows that multiple countries within Africa have regressed. Like, full on collapsed. Zimbabwe was not invaded by an outside enemy. A volcano did not destroy Madagascar's markets. Gabon's political disruptions are not unusual compared to what has happened elsewhere on the continent and in the developing world. And yet their economies have collapsed, and not in a Western-style "country x's economy is in recession" meaning of 'collapse'. Outside Africa this has not happened in such scale across multiple countries in a region/continent without some discrete factor, such as the imposition of Communism in Eastern Europe and Cuba, or the Maoist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. And even Eastern Europe and Cuba, while far poorer than they would be without Communism in their history, are better off than the Ivory Coast.
I'm just more pedantic and count a terrible increase still as an increase.
Mostly just to be precise, so that we have words left for the situation when there's an actual decrease. Like the collapses in individual countries you mention.
Because:
* 1.1% annual growth is a) terrible at any point after c. 1800, and b) sustained over decades (during which bien-pensant commentators repeatedly proclaimed that Africa was about to/already had/surely would grow at enormous speed and soon catch up with the developed world). Comparing it to the industrial revolution-era statistics is meaningless unless the rest of the world is also at that level.
* The data shows that multiple countries within Africa have regressed. Like, full on collapsed. Zimbabwe was not invaded by an outside enemy. A volcano did not destroy Madagascar's markets. Gabon's political disruptions are not unusual compared to what has happened elsewhere on the continent and in the developing world. And yet their economies have collapsed, and not in a Western-style "country x's economy is in recession" meaning of 'collapse'. Outside Africa this has not happened in such scale across multiple countries in a region/continent without some discrete factor, such as the imposition of Communism in Eastern Europe and Cuba, or the Maoist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. And even Eastern Europe and Cuba, while far poorer than they would be without Communism in their history, are better off than the Ivory Coast.