This week’s Brics summit in Durban feels like a relic of the previous decade. After a boom in the 2000s, the pace of growth in the celebrated economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China has slowed by 3 to 4 percentage points. Only China is now growing faster than the emerging market average.
Nowhere does the celebratory mood of the past decade, which inspired this motley group to launch the Brics summits, feel more absent than in South Africa. With its gross domestic product growing at a pace of 2.5 per cent, South Africa is on track to finish the year as one of the slowest economies in Africa.
This is an ironic turn. When The Economist called Africa the “hopeless continent” at the start of the millennium, South Africa seemed to offer a single bright spot. It brought debts and inflation under control, creating the stability required for growth. Now, it is stuck, and many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, from Nigeria to Kenya, are growing twice as fast.