In its World Economic Outlook for 2021 and 2022, the International Monetary Fund has said the economy of Sub-Saharan Africa will likely grow by 3.4% in 2021 and 4.0% in 2022.
In the WEO report titled “Managing Divergent Recoveries”, the IMF in the report released on Thursday projected that African economies will grow in different forms, with South Africa’s economy to grow by 3.1% while Nigeria and Angola are expected to recover by 2.5% and 0.8% respectively.
Recall that Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy contracted by -1.9% last year after the world faced the COVID-19 pandemic in what was a global economic hit.
The global economy which had contracted by -3.3% last year has been projected to grow at 6.0% in 2021 and recede to 4.4% growth by 2022.
Low income developing countries, many of which are in Africa are expected to grow by 4.3% this year, and grow by 5.2% in 2022.
Recall that Nigeria’s GDP contracted by -1.8% in 2020 following the pandemic while South Africa’s suffered a decline of -7.0%.
“Although the contraction of activity in 2020 was unprecedented in living memory, extraordinary policy support prevented even worse economic outcomes. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, a way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly visible, but prospects remain highly uncertain. The strength of the recovery will depend in no small measure on a rapid rollout of effective vaccines worldwide. Much remains to be done to beat back the pandemic and avoid persistent increases in inequality within countries and divergence in income per capita across economies.”
The IMF also charged the wealthier countries of the world to help Africa’s vaccination programmes as a means of helping the world attain a stronger position economically with 60% vaccination expected to cause an increase in the healthcare budgets of nations.