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If you want a contrary, pessimistic view on Africa, Dani Rodrik has you covered.
Basically the reason for pessimism is low productivity growth in manufacturing and service industries. But there's pretty good productivity growth in agriculture, combined with people shifting into manufacturing and services (which are generally more productive). So that's good!
Dani uses low productivity growth in African manufacturing (in recent years) to justify pessimism about African industrialization. But there's nothing here to suggest to me that this trend is permanent, or that the seeds of change haven't already been planted.
In particular, the trend of private Chinese entrepreneurs opening factories in Africa makes me hopeful that Chinese business practices and technology will be imported to Africa, thus raising productivity growth in manufacturing...
In fact, Irene Yuan Sun's book contains some anecdotes about these, so I'll now have to go look for more data...
But basically, I don't think we should let past performance convince us that we can predict future results. There isn't necessarily one permanent or stable "African growth model" that means the 2020s will look like the 2000s.
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