In recent years, many African countries have experienced a growth revival, but this has not necessarily generated decent jobs. Unemployment remained high among youth and the adult African population. Little attention has been paid to the role of informal sector in fostering growth and creating jobs. In fact, the informal sector contributes about 55 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP and 80 per cent of the labour force. Nine in 10 rural and urban workers have informal jobs in Africa and most employees are women and youth. The prominence of the informal sector in most African economies stems from the opportunities it offers to the most vulnerable populations such as the poorest, women and youth. Even though the informal sector is an opportunity for generating reasonable incomes for many people, most informal workers are without secure income, employments benefits and social protection. This explains why informality often overlaps with poverty. For instance, in countries where informality is decreasing, the number of working poor is also decreasing and vice versa.

More than 30 million Africans (about three per cent of Africa’s total population) are living outside their home countries. This figure includes those living within other African countries. These African migrants send money to their families in Africa. Remittances by African migrants play an important role as a source of financing and foreign exchange for African households and countries. A recent report published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows that remittances sent to the world’s poorest countries including 33 African countries have increased to US $27 billion in 2011 from US $3.5 billion in 1990. For Africa as a whole, remittance inflows have more than quadrupled since 1990, reaching US $40 billion in 2010. This represents about three per cent of Africa’s total GDP. Globally, the amount of remittances reached US $300 billion in 2010, surpassing foreign direct investments (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA) combined. The estimate for the Africa figure is widely believed to be conservative, given the evidence of underreporting as some remittance transfers are sent through informal channels. Accounting for informal flows could raise the total amount of remittances to Africa by about 50 per cent.

Africa’s power sector is facing many challenges, mainly due to insufficient generation capacity which has limited electricity supply, resulting in low access. The main obstacle to the increase in electricity generation capacity is the high cost of producing electricity, forcing governments to subsidize consumption. In 2010, the average effective electricity tariff in Africa was US $0.14 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) against an average of US $0.18 per kWh in production costs. Consumption is effectively subsidized, but with significant disparities among African countries.

Until recently, access to global financial markets was very limited for most African countries. In the 1990s, only South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia had regular access to international capital markets. However, since the latter half of the 2000-2010 decade, there has been a growing impetus for a number of countries to tap into international capital markets to raise funds for development. Gabon and Ghana first participated in international capital markets in 2007, while the Democratic Republic of Congo undertook a debt exchange in the same year. From 2011, there have been at least four issuances with the Zambian bond placement in September 2012 the latest.

Despite sustained global economic uncertainty, global sovereign wealth funds (SWF) assets have increased to USD5.16 trillion in 2012 from USD3.98 trillion in 2011. There is a strong positive association between the value of total SWF assets and commodity prices. In recent years, with the sustained rise in commodity prices, significant revenues from commodity exports have led to the establishment of SWF in a number of African countries, especially by oil/gas exporters.