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Abstract
The comparative advantage of sub-Saharan African countries predominantly lies in the export of commodities, whether they be oil, mineral, or agricultural. Managing development based on this kind of comparative advantage is difficult, however, so much so that some refer to the availability of natural resources in a country as the natural resource curse. Yet, there is little doubt that, on average, high real commodity prices as well as the discovery and exploitation of new resources are associated with faster growth, even though possibly tempo-rarily.1 From that point of view, it is difficult not to relate the sustained growth in sub-Saharan Africa since the turn of the century (and for some countries, really from the mid-1990s) to the sustained surge in international commodity prices, itself most likely fed by the heavy demand of emerging economies. It is also interesting that this increase in commodity prices and acceleration of growth came after a long period (i.e., 15 years) of decline in commodity prices and economic stagnation.
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