Unlike the standard cross-country growth regressions that focus on the long run average growthrnand hence mask episodes of high and low growth that most of these countries experience, thisrnpaper follows the recent literature and examine growth episodes in SSA countries. This newrnapproach applied enable us identify years of growth accelerations and episodes which werernsustained over the medium and long-term. More specifically, utilizing the Penn World Data Tablesrnrn(version 6. 2), the study follows the diagnostic or two-pronged strategy of Rodrik (2005a andrn2005b), which focuses on the particular constraints that prevent a given country from growingrnfaster. In the latter part, we analyze the impact of growth on income poverty and inequality inrnselected countries drawing on available household survey data published by the World Bank in itsrnGlobal Poverty Monitoring Database.rnrnTo establish correlation between growth episodes(all accelerations and sustained ones) and policyrnvariables, institutional variables and geographic factors, we estimate alternative limitedrndependant variable models. The results show that variables affect these two growth episodesrndifferently. While US interest rate(proxy of international interest rate shock), petroleum pricernshock, democratization, regime change, resource richness and government expenditure arernimportant predictors of growth accelerations, positive terms-of -trade shock, growth rate of GDPrndeflator, economic liberalization, financial liberalization, ethno linguistic factorization, resourcernendowment, and age dependency ratio determine the probability of sustained growth. The reformrnvariables are not crucial for igniting growth. Rather, these variables are highly correlated withrnthe timing of sustained growth.rnrnOn the other hand, by constructing a panel of income, poverty and inequality measures forrnselected countries, we were able to analyze the impact of growth on poverty and inequality; and ofrninequality on poverty. The result implies that inequality does not change significantly over time inrnthe set of countries analyzed and that growth in these countries is generally pro-poor. It alsorndepict that these countries should sustainably grow by about 7 percent per annum to achieve thernMDG of poverty alleviation.