WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Africa is for once making progress on key indicators such as health and education despite still being weighed down by rampant disease and economic red tape, the World Bank said.

"For the first time in about 25 years, it is possible to say that Africa is beginning to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of per capita income," the bank's chief economist for Africa, John Page, told AFP.

The global lender's African Development Indicators 2006 report showed "remarkable progress" in some countries while others such as President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe lag seriously behind.

Zimbabwe was the only country to record a negative growth rate in 2004 while at the other end of the spectrum, Equatorial Guinea's gross domestic product (GDP) zoomed ahead at a rate of 20.9 percent.

The report said that 16 African countries have sustained annual GDP growth rates in excess of 4.5 percent since the mid-1990s. Inflation is down to "historic lows" and fiscal deficits are dropping.

Overall last year, when Africa and other regions suffered the latest oil price shock, the continent's real GDP grew by 4.3 percent, compared to 5.4 percent in 2004.

Productivity in Africa's best-performing companies is on a par with competitors in Asia such as India and Vietnam, the report said.

But red tape continues to suffocate growth and innovation in some countries, the report added, after another World Bank survey in September put nine African countries in the planet's worst 10 places to do business.

The continent received 10.1 billion dollars in foreign direct investments last year, just 1.6 percent of the global total, the latest report said.

But the World Bank said equally pressing are reforms to boost trade within Africa itself, including through investments that target the poor and better governance of the continent's rich natural resources.

Africa is the world's lone region where the number of the poor continues to rise, despite a UN commitment to halve the direst levels of poverty by 2010, the report said.

But several countries have lifted large numbers of people out of poverty and could meet the UN's "Millennium Development Goal" by 2010, it said, citing Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda.

The continent as a whole faces an "immense disease burden" posed by HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, as well as challenges from corruption, high tariffs and dwindling investment.

But most parts of Africa are also making great strides in crucial indicators such as the numbers of children enrolled in primary schools, which rose to an average of 93 percent in 2004 from 72 percent in 1990.

"While economic outcomes are increasingly diverse, Africa has made near uniform progress in social outcomes, notably education and health," Page said.

However, he noted that the rising primary school enrollment rates have not translated into more numbers of African children in secondary or tertiary education.

"On the other hand, there is increasing diversity in the economic performance in Africa. We are beginning to see different groups of countries growing at different rates," the World Bank official said.