S&P's said that high commodity prices would be a major factor in making Sub Saharan Africa relatively immune to the effect of the global economic slowdown.

"The so-called new scramble for Africa, spearheaded by China and India, has also contributed to better economic growth on the continent. It has pushed gross foreign-direct investment flow to over $20-billion in 2006 from about $15-billion in 2001, an increase of 40%," said S&P's MD for South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa Konrad Reuss.

Reuss stated that "particularly in South Africa's case, significant spending for investment and strong demand for its mineral resources will continue to prop up its economic performance, partly offsetting the effects of power shortages".

"Fortunately, with the commodity price boom unlikely to go bust in the near future, time is on Africa's side to make further strides towards economic, political and social progress," added Reuss.

"Even if commodity prices were to retreat somewhat from their current lofty levels, it's unlikely they would fall back to their historic averages," noted Reuss.

Reuss, however, did warn that Africa would have to continually post gross domestic-product growth (GDP) in excess of the 6% achieved in 2007 in order to catch up with other emerging economies and get closer to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

In its latest report: Can Sub Saharan Africa keep up the pace as global growth slows down? S&P's also said that African countries would need to monitor the current food and energy price shocks, which could become the main risk for the continent's countries if they failed to come up with sound policy responses to these exogenous factors.

The report also singled out Nigeria as a country "on the mend", where the combination of increased business, investor and consumer confidence, along with progress in economic and political stability and booming banking and agriculture sectors have made non oil GDP raise by more than 9% on average between 2004-2008.

GDP growth declines in Kenya were estimated at 1,5% this year (from 6% in 2007) due to violence and political uncertainty. However, an improvement on the transfer balance due to increased donor flows and the resilience of remittances from Kenyan expatriates would partly offset the effects on the balance of payment.

With commodity prices remaining higher than their historic averages and robust North-South and South-South investor interest in Sub Saharan African assets, the window of opportunity remained open to strengthen Africa's economic fabric.