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Mark Bohlund on Africa and the Global Economy (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Mark Boland, I want you to come in and tell
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  Speaker 1: us a little bit about Africa just in the context
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  Speaker 1: of the global economy, and maybe just tell people a
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  Speaker 1: little bit about what you do and how you spend
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  Speaker 1: your time, because you're analyzing economies that are growing in
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  Speaker 1: some cases much faster than developed economies, but they're growing
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  Speaker 1: from a lower base. Yes, I mean that's the case
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  Speaker 1: I've previously mentioned, you know, talking to clients that for
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  Speaker 1: as sub South Africa as a whole, we're going to
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  Speaker 1: see quite a sharp slow down in growth from four
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  Speaker 1: to five evens up to seven percent over the past
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  Speaker 1: fifteen years to this year. It's not going to be
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  Speaker 1: that much more than maybe one to one and a
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  Speaker 1: half percent. But this is not really reflective for subside
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  Speaker 1: Africa as a whole, because you just dominated the The
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  Speaker 1: aggregate GDP number is dominated by Nigeria, which is in recession,
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  Speaker 1: and South Africa, which has more or less zero growth
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  Speaker 1: this year in Angola, which there's not that much data
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  Speaker 1: out on Angola on a regular basis. So these are
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  Speaker 1: three economies that together account for sixty of g D
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  Speaker 1: two GDP, but only about of the population. So I
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  Speaker 1: mean the majority of African countries are still growing at
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  Speaker 1: a relatively healthy clip. And that's especially the case for
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  Speaker 1: the for the smaller economies or the poorer economies that
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  Speaker 1: now catching up with the more development. Two parts number one,
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  Speaker 1: what slowed subs here Africa so short, so sharply in
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  Speaker 1: a nutshell, And what is driving the smaller economies to
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  Speaker 1: healthy growth rates at this point? Well, what's slowing the
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  Speaker 1: economies and Nigeria Angola is really a sort of deflation
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  Speaker 1: of the commodity boom. The you know, the sharp rising
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  Speaker 1: oil price just bought brought in a lot of revenue
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  Speaker 1: which unfortunately was not invested in infrastructure, was not saved.
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  Speaker 1: So this kind of in a way almost automatically stimulates
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  Speaker 1: service demands and a little non tradeable sector and that
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  Speaker 1: is now dropping sharply. But there are in majority of
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  Speaker 1: countries actually benefit from lower ngury prices. It's a big,
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  Speaker 1: big import item. It's more money they can spend on
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  Speaker 1: other items. So this is what you're seeing in Tanzania
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  Speaker 1: and other economies. That's the general story. I know that
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  Speaker 1: you wanted to talk a little bit about the economy
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  Speaker 1: of the Congo. Yes, this is a democratic Republic of Congo.
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  Speaker 1: Congo chin Kinshasa. So it's the third biggest country by
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  Speaker 1: population after Nigeria and Ethiopia, and a country that has
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  Speaker 1: a very troubled history, that had a civil war from
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  Speaker 1: the late nineties into the early two thous and that
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  Speaker 1: I mean, no one really knows how many people died.
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  Speaker 1: It was, I mean three to five million, I mean
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  Speaker 1: a lot of them in starvation. Uh and it and
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  Speaker 1: it involved a lot of the neighboring countries around the
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  Speaker 1: Uganda and Amibia, Angola. And now it's heading up to
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  Speaker 1: elections later this year according to the constitution, but the
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  Speaker 1: government is holding out saying that they need to update
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  Speaker 1: the census to electoral role to hold these elections. And
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  Speaker 1: the opposition is is against this, saying this is just
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  Speaker 1: a stalling tactic to keep the current president, Joseph Kabila
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  Speaker 1: in office. And now in the last few days this
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  Speaker 1: has turned violent in Kinshasa. I'm not sure what the
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  Speaker 1: latest death toll is. We're talking fifties sixty people. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: this is this is very tragic, but I think there's
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  Speaker 1: still a reason to be relatively optimistic and in the
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  Speaker 1: sense that we're not going to see a return to
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  Speaker 1: the kind of armed conflict that you had a decade ago. Alright, well,
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  Speaker 1: Mark bollow me. Thank you for joining us. So it's
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  Speaker 1: a treat to have you here in New York City.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, Pim spent a lot of time yesterday at
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  Speaker 1: the Big Africa Summit at the Plaza Hotel here in
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  Speaker 1: New York City. We also think Helena should let Giva
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  Speaker 1: from our Bloomberg intelligence team here in New York. She
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  Speaker 1: also contributes to the Bloomberg brief on economics. I'm Kathleen
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  Speaker 1: Hayes along with Pim Fox, and this is Bloomberg. Then
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  Speaker 1: they