The 'Africa effect'

A research team led by Robert H. Bates of the Africa Research Program found that:

African governments were instrumental in inhibiting the growth of their own economies in the late 20th century, according to a decade-long project conducted by African scholars and economists. Robert Bates, professor of government in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has been immersed in this economic survey, helping the economists to understand that governmental role....whatever the material situations of various African states — whether resource-scare or resource-rich, land-locked or coastal — each economy grew more slowly in Africa than it did in counterpart economies elsewhere in the world. In fact, without the “Africa effect,” they found that no natural obstacle would have prevented coastal African countries from growing at the same rate as Asian countries such as Mauritius or Thailand