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China fact of the day
China could buy every African quoted company with its foreign-exchange reserves.
Here is the source, and that is via Pablo Halkyard, who wonders: "Maybe its actually an Africa fact of the day."
Here are Greg Rehmke's links to material on Africa and development.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 30, 2007 at 08:09 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
Note that the top 10 banks in the world could also buy all of Africa's quoted companies with their balance sheets see table here with 2004 data, as could the Abu Dhabi development fund, so China isn't unique in this regard.
Posted by: DK at Jul 30, 2007 9:26:35 AM
errrrr..
i'm surprised this wasn't common knowledge.
it's even more surprising to read that Pablo Halkyard just discovers that the US imports more africa from there than from the middle east.
Posted by: random african at Jul 30, 2007 10:54:09 AM
Hmmm... China is about twice as large as Africa (population-wise), so this fact doesn't really surprise me.
Posted by: JSK at Jul 30, 2007 12:18:00 PM
The article notes Algeria as doing better than many other countries. When most people think "Africa" they think "sub-Saharan" Africa, so I'm not sure if Algeria should be lumped in. Egypt is also technically in Africa, but like Algeria it has a primarily Arab and Berber muslim population. I haven't looked at enough data to see whether Algeria and other North African states bear a greater resemblance the Middle East or sub-Saharan Africa, so I'm interested in what the rest of you think.
Posted by: TGGP at Jul 30, 2007 4:20:11 PM
@TGGP: Botswana in sub-Sahara Africa is doing better economically speaking. I doubt race is a very good predictor of economic succes...
Posted by: JSK at Jul 30, 2007 11:04:23 PM
Botswana, the outlier with a tiny population and lots of diamonds. Even with the revenue from diamond mining, the country has a 20% unemployment rate. Without diamonds...
Posted by: Dareano at Jul 31, 2007 12:52:36 AM
And Algeria isn't well endowned with natural resources? Please. (btw, Algeria's unemployment rate is 15%)
Posted by: JSK at Jul 31, 2007 2:54:45 AM
"Hmmm... China is about twice as large as Africa (population-wise), so this fact doesn't really surprise me."
Africa has 900 million population, China has 1300 million, according to wikipedia. So it's a bit less than 50% larger.
Posted by: at Jul 31, 2007 5:36:33 AM
African has indigenous listed firms??? (Sorry, that was my first reaction...)
Posted by: at Jul 31, 2007 9:25:35 AM
@nameless: 1300/900*100% = 144%. 44% is 'about' half, wouldn't you say so? Just pointing out even though China is a single country, it's a 'continent' in itself. It does strike me as particulary weird that one 'continent' can buy up another.
Posted by: JSK at Jul 31, 2007 3:02:18 PM
JSK, you are right about Botswana. Botswana is not typical for sub-Saharan African countries. You don't have to ascribe this to race. It could be culture. It could be the level of development the colonialist occupiers engaged in depending on whether they treated their colony as a place for them to live and settle in or simply extract resources from. Nevertheless, we do see differences between regions, including between the middle east and sub-saharan Africa. I am just questioning whether Algeria is more like the former than the latter in economic and other factors. I have seen many other people lump in North Africa with the Middle East, and I was wondering whether that should also be the case here. Unemployment rates in other middle eastern and sub-saharan african countries would be good to have for comparison.
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Posted by: jack at Jan 6, 2008 9:25:41 PM
