Good News From Africa

Africa is widely regarded as a world leader by measure of basket-case symptoms — war, disease, famine and humanitarian disaster. The continent has a greater share of its people mired in poverty than any other, and hosts the world's two greatest humanitarian crises, Darfur and Somalia. So it may come as a bit of a surprise to many that much of Africa is doing rather nicely, in some cases recording healthier economic expansion than in the industrialized world. Even amid the financial meltdown in the West and dire predictions of global recession, the International Monetary Fund estimates that Africa will post economic growth of 6.5% this year, although the world credit crisis could trim that to 5%. And the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that a larger share of the money coming into Africa since 2006 has been investment by entrepreneurs seeking profit rather than aid