Fortune: The outlook for the global economy brings growth down by 0.3 percentage points, while the outlook for Africa is up by 0.3 percentage points. What is missing here?

It is not so much missing. Africa’s growth is not correlated with what goes on globally. The main channel through which global growth tends to affect the region is commodity prices, of course. If we have much more pronounced swings in global growth, then you would see an effect in those countries in the region that have closely integrated into the global economy.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, what we have seen is a recovery from the sharp slump in commodity prices from 2014 to 2016. I will note that we had, at least for a little while, two distinct trends in the region.

We should not lose sight of the fact that many countries, 21 or 22 of them, have in the recent past and continue to grow rapidly, five percent or more. And then there is another group of countries, which includes large countries like Nigeria, South Africa and Angola that have been hit very badly by the commodity price shock. Those countries were in a recession a little while ago and now are emerging from it, and growth is beginning to accelerate.

In the region as a whole, what we are seeing is the pick up in growth in those countries, taking the regional average up. In some of these large countries, growth is quite decent.

Q: We have all been hearing about the ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China, which will possibly dampen demand for commodities, which will affect African countries.

Just to be precise, global uncertainty has affected the last half of last year and the first early months of this year. But the easing of monetary conditions that we saw by central banks and the recovery in capital markets has offset that somewhat. This is why we are saying we are at a delicate moment, and we do not want to see any impulses that push growth down further. We do want to see better outcomes with trade, the policy environment improving and sustainable growth in the global economy.

Q: There are people who see Africa’s priority as climate change, a risk of digital exclusion and capital inflow from China. Do you think these are the top priorities for Africa?

I think it is important to disentangle long-term trends and more short to medium-term challenges. Over the long-term, of course, demographic trends and climate change all pose significant challenges. In a more short-term period, the challenges revolve around making sure that the calibration of policies are striking the right balance between, on the one hand, addressing the investments that our countries need in health, education and infrastructure while avoiding debt sustainability-type considerations.

The key to that really is calibrating monetary and fiscal policies and investing in the right areas. The right areas to invest in differ from country to country though.