Economic growth needed to meet Millennium goals - IMF

African economies will need to double in size if they are to meet the UN Millennium goals, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said on Monday.

Kenneth Rogoff, head of research and chief economist at the IMF, said the continent would need an average overall growth rate of about 7 percent to meet the targets by 2015. He was optimistic that countries would meet the target and that Africa could have much higher growth rates – comparable with the boom years of the Asian economies.

“Every other region had a fall in growth and Africa actually had a rise,” Rogoff told a press conference in Addis Ababa. However, he said the rate should be higher.

“Certainly a major factor in Africa’s better performance is that there has been reduced conflict,in addition to stronger policies, and that is one of the reasons we are optimistic in the region going forward,” he stated.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals – which all 189 UN member States have pledged to meet by 2015 - set out a series of social and economic targets.

Rogoff also welcomed the improvements in African monetary policies and the decline in inflation, but said African economies should be more flexible. He criticised industrialised countries which had introduced trade barriers, describing their action as “lamentable”. He said this had had a dramatic effect on Africa.