http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/771271.stm
Africa's problems
Roads: only 16% paved
Telephones: 10 per 1000
Electricity: 80% lack access
Aids: 35m infected
Sanitation: inadequate for 75% of rural population
Source: Can Africa Claim the 21st Century
Even just to maintain current levels of poverty, African economies will have to grow by 5% because of rapidly growing populations
A new report by the World Bank says many African countries are worse off now than they were at independence in the 1960s.
The bank says the total combined income of 48 countries in Africa is little more than that of Belgium.
The World Bank report, called Can Africa Claim The Twenty-first Century?, says major structural changes are needed if Africa is to catch up with the rest of the world.
But, the report says Africa has "enormous untapped potential and hidden growth reserves", if it can mobilise its human resources and improve its political systems.
Years of neglect
In the last 40 years, average incomes per person in Africa have stagnated while they have grown in most of the rest of the world.
Africa now accounts for only 1% of the total world economic output and 2% of world trade.
On average, African countries have economies smaller than a town of 60,000 people in a rich country.
With only 10m telephone lines, half of them in South Africa, there is little chance of most Africans gaining access to the internet.
Africa has fewer roads than Poland, only 16% of which are paved, and only one in five households has access to electricity.
Two-thirds of rural Africans lack adequate water supplies, while three quarters lack adequate sanitation.