Nigeria’s economy, and other sub-Saharan Africa countries, will be home to several of the world’s fastest-growing economies in 2019 according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The region, it said, is expected to have overall economic growth of 3.8 per cent, on par with the global forecast of 3.7 per cent.
The region’s growth will be driven by the steady rebound of commodity prices, an improvement in the global economy and improved capital market access after several of the countries made valiant attempts to get their fiscal books in order following the commodity price slump of 2014-15.
But those numbers would be even better were it not for the underwhelming projections from the continent’s big two: Nigeria and South Africa who are recovering from a pretty tough 2018 and both have presidential elections.
Nigeria is expected to see an expansion of 2.3 per cent—better, but not much, than the 1.9 per cent of 2018. South Africa will expand by 1.4 per cent which is, again, an improvement on 0.8 per cent last year, but nothing to cheer about.
If you leave out the big two and Angola, aggregate growth for sub-Saharan Africa rises to 5.7 per cent for 2019.
