From the vantage point of many in the West, Africa remains a continent of woe a place stalked by ethnic conflict, corrupt dictatorships, religious strife, war and famine. But today, at last, the flawed mythology that treats Africa as a homogenous disaster area is being challenged by investors, economists, fund managers and academics. Age is not often associated with speed; but Africa, the cradle of civilisation, now has more of the world s fastest-growing economies than any other. After a generation of relative stagnation in the late 20th Century, many in Africa have begun the long-awaited period of catch-up with the developed world. The bottom billion is becoming the fastest billion. This book, the work of a group of African economists and highly respected analysts from Renaissance Capital, the leading emerging markets investment bank, aims to accelerate the world s realisation that Africa has no intention of allowing the coming decades to add up to an Asian Century . Africa s day has arrived. Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Ashesi University, Ghana. www.ashesi.edu.gh View the video trailers at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1krRT3R9cc&feature=youtu.be and https://vimeo. com/50979959 Visit our website www.fastestbillion.com for more information

Although several country-level studies have investigated the impact of access to credit on various outcome variables, few of these have looked at the full effect of membership in a credit programme. The study in this book was conducted on a Malawian dataset that was collected through a household rural finance survey. The study differs from others in that the operative explanatory variable is not monetary credit but credit programme membership. Contrary to findings in other related studies, this book finds that the effect of membership does not depend on the gender of the household head. Credit programme membership, regardless of the gender of the household head, was found to make households better off, as manifested by the significantly lower food shares of member households. Female-headed households, irrespective of their membership status, were found to spend significantly more on food than their male-headed counterparts. This book should add to the discourse on the welfare effect of microcredit programmes and be of interest to development economists, or policymakers assessing the benefits of improving credit access to households.