It is important to recall that in 1980, China was desperately poor and even less developed than Africa is today. China’s 1980 gross domestic product (GDP) of $423 billion was barely larger than that of the Netherlands and its GDP per capita was $431 per year, just half of Ethiopia’s today.

Over the next 40 years, China expanded its prime-age working population by over 200 million people, equipped them with the tools to be more productive, drew in global investment and expanded its economy 30-fold.

In the next 20 years, African countries will increase their prime-age working population by 400 million workers. If over the next 40 years even half of them achieve the same productivity gains as China (or all of them achieve on average half of China’s productivity gains), Africa would increase its GDP 15-fold, a gain of $52 trillion, which would produce a 60 per cent increase over the world’s total GDP in 2021.

Of course, it may seem unlikely that the 54 diverse countries on the continent could together produce a productivity miracle like that of China. But in 1980, the idea that communist China would soon have an economy rivalling that of all of Europe or the United States would have seemed ridiculous. At the same time, Bangladesh was dismissed as a hopelessly overcrowded and impoverished “basket case”; yet Bangladesh, despite lacking any of the natural and energy resources that Africa has in abundance, has grown its GDP fivefold in the past 30 years; its GDP per capita is now greater than India’s.

If Africa can achieve even Bangladesh-level growth over the next 30 years, it would add $15 trillion to the global economy – about the same contribution as China made from 1980 to 2020.

Such rates of growth are not fantastical. From 1980 to 2020, sub-Saharan Africa tripled its GDP from $600 billion to $1.9 trillion. From 2000 to 2020, Nigeria nearly tripled its GDP; Ethiopia’s has grown fivefold in that period. If these countries can build on this performance and carry other African economies with them through greater regional integration, a generation of young Africans can create a global boom. No other region of the world can produce anything like the potential growth of Africa.

The world economy needs Africa’s economic growth; but it also needs Africa to take a different path than did China. The Asian giant followed the West’s pattern of early industrialization: grow quick and dirty and worry about the consequences later. Driven for years by coal, China’s economic success has also been an environmental disaster. Since 2005, China has been the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Although Africa’s carbon emissions today are tiny, its development could rapidly add dangerous levels of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, undoing the benefits that come with reductions made by other countries.

Growth in Africa must be clean, both in terms of generating energy and not despoiling the continent’s landscape and natural resources. Fortunately for Africa, the continent not only has plentiful sources of hydro, solar, wind, tidal and geothermal power. It can also reap the benefits of technological advances that have lowered the price of clean energy by an order of magnitude from just a decade ago.

Indeed, in most places, renewable power is now cheaper than burning coal. New methods of large-scale energy storage, from stored hydropower and pressurised gas to improved batteries and capacitors, will soon make it possible to overcome the intermittency problems that plague solar and wind power. African leaders already recognise the need for clean development.

The Kigali Communiqué, Ensuring a Just and Equitable Energy Transition in Africa, signed by ten African countries in May 2022, and the African Common Position on Energy Access and Just Transition, led by the African Union Commission, both present a vision for Africa’s energy future of development and job creation based on clean energy, powered by sustainable electricity production. With sufficient support from multilateral and external sources, including private investment, African leaders will be able and willing to pursue this vision.

The energy and environment expert Kelly Sims Gallagher has suggested establishing a Green Bank, an institution similar to the World Bank that would specialise in financing green energy projects in developing countries with grants and low-interest loans. Today, most efforts to tackle climate change focus on reducing the emissions of the largest greenhouse gas producers. Although those reductions are essential, they will also be futile unless the world’s fastest-growing populations and most rapidly growing economies find a cleaner path.

Outsiders looking at Africa today must look past (but not overlook) the obstacles to growth. It is true that much development aid to Africa has to a large extent been wasted but that is because aid has so often been directed to projects designed to promote the interests of leaders, rather than to bottom-up market-driven investments that meet local demands.

China’s experience has shown that certain measures work: carving out special economic zones; focusing on education, infrastructure, education and international competitiveness; and building a government that holds local officials accountable for disorder but also rewards them for presiding over economic growth. African countries need to work with each other to create a more integrated institutional climate that attracts private investment from abroad.

Charitable foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have shown, for instance, that relatively small amounts of money, carefully spent, can produce great results in improving public health. Funds to support secondary education and improve its quality – whether from charitable foundations or governments – can pay similar dividends. But the investments that create jobs in tourism, services, light manufacturing, heavy industry, design, entertainment, retail, shipping, publishing, communications, and finance will have to come from the global private sector.

Of course, the greatest obstacle to Africa’s growth has been internal conflicts, from civil and regional wars to genocides. Ethiopia’s recent war in Tigray may have killed three-quarters of a million people, far more than have died in the war in Ukraine. More vigorous diplomacy is needed to prevent, or more quickly end, the conflicts that are slowing growth. Leaders of African countries must also forsake pecuniary self-interest for that of the greater good.

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan did not succeed economically without first having to overcome corruption and dictatorship; but in all these countries, leaders came to recognise that there were greater gains to be had in prioritizing the growth of the country as a whole, rather than simply appropriating a slice of the existing economy for their family, clan, or region. National unity and compromise among leaders are vital for growth; leaders who recognize this will see their economies pull away from their neighbours and attract talent from across the continent – and capital from around the world.

For too long, Africa has been seen through the lens of its recent past, rather than that of its potential future. Demographic trends are now placing Africa front and centre as the one region that can sustain global growth. Africa demands everybody’s attention, not just to give it support but because it is vital for the world.

• A Tell Media report / By Jack A. Goldstone – a Hazel professor of public policy at George Mason University /The article is republished from Foreign Policy