Lecture: Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier

Harry Broadman examines the two emerging economic giants of Asia—China and India.

Recently accelerating Asian trade and investment in Africa hold great promise for Sub-Saharan Africa's economic growth and development—provided certain policy reforms on both continents are implemented. This is the central finding of a new book, "Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier," authored by Harry Broadman of the World Bank. Africa's Silk Road provides, for the first time, systematic empirical evidence on how the two emerging economic giants of Asia—China and India—now stand at the crossroads of the "South-South" explosion of African-Asian trade and investment. The book explores the day-to-day operations of 470 firms, highlighting the role of Chinese and Indian companies operating in four African countries—South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana, and Senegal—utilizing both new quantitative firm-level survey data as well as new qualitative data from original business case studies developed in the field.

Harry Broadman is Economic Adviser in the Africa Region at the World Bank in Washington, DC. In that capacity he is a key architect of the Bank's new corporate strategy in Africa and of a new investment fund--the Africa Catalytic Growth Fund--that facilitates innovative investments on the continent. In early 2007, the World Bank published his new book, "Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier." Previously Dr. Broadman served as the Bank's Lead Economist for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union and also as the Bank's International Trade Policy Coordinator for that region. In that role, he managed the Bank's structural adjustment loan operations in the Russian Federation—prior to, during, and after that country's economic crisis in the late 1990s and early 2000s—as well as managed major loan and policy operations in the Balkans and Central Asia. His book, "From Disintegration to Reintegration: Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in International Trade," was published by the World Bank in early 2006. Previously, Dr. Boadman led the Bank's work in China on state owned enterprise reform, WTO accession, competition policy and corporate governance reform. Prior to joining the World Bank in 1993, Dr. Broadman served in the U.S. White House, first as Chief of Staff and Senior Economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and then as Assistant United States Trade Representative, where he was in charge of negotiating key portions of the Uruguay Round that led to the creation of the WTO, and of the NAFTA. Earlier, he was an Economic Consultant at the Rand Corporation; Assistant Director at Resources for the Future, Inc.; on the faculties of Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities; a Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Broadman received his undergraduate education at Brown University, graduating magna cum laude, with a joint degree in economics and history and elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received a doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan.