bsama:

Released last week, the revised version of “The World in 2050” also predicts that in purchasing power parity terms, the E7 group of emerging countries (China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey) will overtake the G7 economies (US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada) by 2020.

“Our key conclusion is that the global financial crisis has further accelerated the shift in global economic power to the emerging economies,” the report says. The original version was published in 2006, before the 2008-09 crisis.

With reference to South Africa, the report projects an average annual population growth rate of 0.3%, and an average annual GDP (gross domestic product) per capita growth of 3.6%, from now until 2050.

It ranks South Africa as the world’s twentieth largest economy in 2009, both in terms of purchasing power parity, with the economy worth US$508-billion, and at market exchange rate rankings, with the economy worth $286-billion.

However, by 2050, South Africa is projected to drop out of the top-20 ranking, where it could be replaced by Nigeria, which has a higher average annual growth rate till 2050 (at 7.9%), a higher average annual growth rate per capita of five percent, and higher average annual population growth rate of 1.5%.

Nigeria has the largest expected contribution from population growth over the next 40 years, which will significantly increase its working age population contributing to GDP growth.

# I’m late on this , need to read in-depth…