Will this be Africa's century?

For Jean-Louis Terrier, Chairman of Credit Risk International, a consulting firm, there

His logic is simple: there can be no economic growth at a rate lower than population growth. Starting with that axiom, which he argues always holds true in the long run, Mr Terrier builds a prediction for 2015 based on projected economic and demographic growth rates, in urban areas in particular. He opts for a "reasonable" scenario, assuming that economic growth will average 3.5% between 1996 and 2005 close to the levels of the last three years - and a slight acceleration for 2006 and 2015. Since the population is expected to increase by 58% between 1995 and 2015 - tripling in the cities - per capita GDP will rise automatically by 35%. As a result, the number of Africans with purchasing power of US$10,000 per year will quadruple; so that by 2015 the African continent could represent a market equivalent to that of China today.