Structured Debatein African Economic Development

Resolved: rich countries should abandon GDP growth as a policy target

On the idea: Does economic growth always improve quality of life?

Opening note

Two opening statements of 400 words, then cross-examination, then revised positions. Cite at least one source per claim about magnitudes.

OBOuattara BamadouOpened 30 Jun 2026

Participants: Ouattara Bamadou, Dr. Femi Akintola, Noémie Simard, Kenji Tokoro, Amara Moyo

Evidence on the table

Lecture clipClaim supported14:32 – 16:15

Lecture: the limits of the growth imperative

Supports Rich economies can raise wellbeing while holding material throughput flat.

“The question is not whether we can grow, but whether the things we are growing are the things we said we wanted.”

…if you hold throughput constant and keep improving allocation, you still get better outcomes for two or three decades. That is not degrowth as austerity; it is growth measured in something other than tonnage.

Provenance Public university lecture series, recorded · 2022

Added by @amara

NSNoémie Simard30 Jun 2026

For the motion. A target is not a value; it is a proxy that governs attention. GDP was designed in 1934 to measure wartime productive capacity and Kuznets himself warned against reading welfare from it. Once a proxy becomes the target it stops tracking what it proxied — the familiar Goodhart failure. Rich countries can keep growing without aiming at it, exactly as they keep breathing without aiming at respiration.

KTKenji Tokoro30 Jun 2026

Goodhart applies to measures used for control of the measured agent. No finance ministry can instruct the economy to produce a number. The failure mode you describe requires a lever that does not exist.

NSNoémie Simard1 Jul 2026

The lever is budgetary. Projects are appraised against forecast output effects; that is control enough to bend what gets built.

DFDr. Femi Akintola1 Jul 2026

Against, with a caveat about who 'rich countries' means in practice. Abandoning the target in the North is not costless in the South: roughly a third of Sub-Saharan export demand is income-elastic and tied to Northern consumption. A politics of sufficiency in Berlin is a demand shock in Mombasa. I want the ceiling argued together with the floor.

AMAmara Moyo2 Jul 2026

This is the strongest point in the thread and it is rarely made. Adding the figure: UNCTAD puts income elasticity of African manufactured exports around 1.4.

KTKenji Tokoro3 Jul 2026

Revised position after cross-examination: I now accept that the target shapes appraisal, and would replace 'abandon' with 'demote to one of four headline indicators alongside median disposable income, healthy life expectancy and emissions.' That is a real concession, not a rhetorical one.