According to the CIA World Factbookthefastestgrowingeconomy?

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iss......

ANGOLA!

Indeed, this might come as a tremoundous surprise, or not..

Yes, Angola is an oil and diamond rich country but were you surprised that an African country was the fastest growing economy in the world?

Indeed, many African countries appeared on the top 25 list of fastest growing economies. The two continents most represented were Africa and Asia.

After Angola the list looked like this.... (not counting dependent territories).

2.Azerbaijan (Asia)
3.Qatar (Asia)
4. Equatorial Guinea(Africa)
5. Republic of the Congo(Africa)
6. Solomon Islands(Oceania)
7. Mongolia(Asia)
8. China (Asia) YES, only EIGHTH PLACE
9. Armenia(Asia) and Liberia(Africa)
10. Peru (South America)
11. Ethiopia(Africa) and the United Arab Emirates(Asia)
12. Panama(North America) and Uzbekistan(Asia)
13. Belarus(Europe) and Kuwait (Asia)
14. Lebanon(Asia) and Romania (Europe)
15. Bhutan(ASia)
16. Montenegro(Europe) and Turkmenistan(Asia)
17. Libya(Africa)
18. Tanzania(Africa)
19. Bahrain(Asia), Cambodia(Asia), Cape Verde(Africa), EGypt(Africa and Asia), Madagascar(Africa), Malawi(Africa), Slovakia(Europe)
20. Mozambique(Africa)
21. Georgia(Europe and Asia)
22. Argentina(South AMerica) and Iraq(Asia)
23. Ecuador(South America) and Maldives (Asia)
24. Iran(Asia) and Uganda(africa)
25. Ghana(Africa), Papua new Guinea(Oceania), Vietnam(Asia)

Of course, one last note, which should be relevant. Statistics may be biased, because Africa has the most countries of any continent(53) and Asia is second(48). but based by continent this is how it looks like

Africa 14
Asia 18
North America 1
South America 3
Oceania 2
Europe 5

Surprisingly or not?

See what you thin

BTW this info is on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastest_Growing_Economies where the primary source is the CIA World Factbook.

Anyone up for a discussion?

The statistic is meaningless out of context. When you start at nothing, you have nowhere to go but up, and even the slightest improvement can make you a "fast growing economy." The economies of the United States, Canada, western Europe, and Japan are already well-developed and huge- it would be completely impossible for the size of, say, the German economy to double in a year. But a piss-poor country like Ethiopia? Sure, its economy could quite feasibly double in a year. They'd still be poor.

rate is not equal to state

ruveyn

I actually guessed Angola... why? Major oil producer that had been at endless civil war, disrupting its attempts to extract and sell oil... and it took a while after Savimbi was eliminated to get things on track...

Remember that Equatorial Guinea had been the fastest growing economy after oil was discovered there in the late 1990s.

Africa's growth from the mid 2000s has been impressive, and this is the result of two things. Commodities and China, and they are both related. The meltdown in the U.S. unfortunately has slowed that down somewhat as commodities have plunged in value. So I wonder how current these statistics are... sounds like last year before crisis struck.

China is providing a lot of investment in Africa.

Two is twice one. 110 is only 1.1 times 100. Which is the larger gain?

The statistic is of no practical use.

It's not quite right to say that it has no practical value... it's a way to see where there's new development...

Still, it may be incorrect to describe it as "the fastest growing economy". If an economy was like a bubble and one was small and doubled but one was very large but increased by 5%, the speed of the movement out could be more on the large one increasing by 5%, depending on the original size... and the speed of that movement would be the speed of the growing economy...

Angola itself was one of the wealthier African countries, by the way, despite the war... this shows really how poor most of them are. It's also the country where Apartheid was defeated in battle.

The downside is that many of those countries are led by corrupt autocrats.

Equatorial Guinea, from 1968-1979, was led by a fascist dictator who banned religion, banned the word "intellectual", and sent half the country's population packing. There were public executions set to rock music. It was a very weird place then.

Isn't there one leader in Africa who claims to cure AIDS?

I'm surprised Senegal wasn't on the list.

I think it is good that so many countries in Africa are experiencing positive economic conditions. It is true that it is generally easier to grow from a smaller base, but I don't think they are at zero point zero zero one. Things could get much worse in any country.