Washington: Soaring food and energy prices threaten to derail economies in Africa by encouraging governments to take "knee-jerk" reactions to cope with the stress, the World Bank's top official for Africa said. Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank vice president for the Africa Region, said the continent's economy is growing 5.4 per cent on average, not yet the threshold pace to produce a decline in poverty. "Any kind of exogenous shocks such as what we see with the rising food and rising energy prices can potentially derail that trajectory of growth," she told a news conference yesterday.

"The issues of Africa could not be more important for the global agenda," the former Nigerian education minister said.

"It is through growth that poverty decline ultimately happens."

The rampant rise in energy and food prices the latter sparking deadly violence around the globe captured the spotlight last weekend at the spring meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund.

The price hikes are exerting enormous pressure on Africa s growth and governments, the World Bank official said.

"There's clearly a sense that when you have these kinds of pressure it could take people off the track of the reforms, they could abandon the track that has paid off some good dividends in terms of growth and go back to old habits, because that would be the kind of knee-jerk reaction that governments could do," she said.

Source : PTI