Is Africa the next East Asia?

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For some countries, signs are truly encouraging: Ghana is a functioning, stable democracy with a pretty good education system (in African comparison), reasonably low corruption, and a emerging domestic IT industry. Neighbouring Ivory Coast is quickly recovering politically and economically from the civil war.
The South African Development Co-operation (SADC) is progressing with creating a regional free trade and investment zone that helps to foster economic development in South Africa and its neighbourhood, up to Tanzania and Zambia.
Ethiopia, at more than 70 million inhabitants,  has become a market too sizeable to overlook, and has a well developed and also rather low-corruption administration. Similar to Vietnam, the large Ethiopian diaspora helps to stimulate inflow of external capital and know-how. Asides, Ethiopia is close enough to the Gulf states to benefit from the region's growing markets and excess of capital.

In order to turn these national/ regional trends into an upswing for the whole continent (or at least its Sub-Saharan part), however, the three "heavyweights", namely Nigeria, Kenia, and Congo, still have to overcome quite a number of problems, including domestic instability, corruption, and tribalism.
Moreover, the Continent lacks land transport infrastructure. As such, aside from Southern Africa, growth rather tends to be induced by trans-Atlantic (Latin America, Europe) and trans-Indian Ocean / Red Sea growth than stemming from autochthone dynamics. Land-locked states, especially in the Sahel, still face substantial constraints when it comes to integrating into international trade.