Nigeria and South Africa are expected to drive growth in Sub Saharan Africa as the World Bank revised downwards the economic growth of the region in 2017 from 2.6 per cent projected in April this year to 2.4 per cent.
The World Bank said the downgrade was due to a number of reasons which include Nigeria’s failure to meet expectations.
However, its exit from recession as well as South Africa’s exit will continue to drive growth.
In its latest Africa Pulse report, the World Bank said “regional per capita output growth is forecast to be negative for the second consecutive year, while investment growth remains low, and productivity growth is falling.”
Growth across the region, however, was seen rising 3.2 per cent in 2018 and 3.5 per cent in 2019.
The Africa Pulse report said the region would be helped by better commodity prices.
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Sub-Saharan African economies have been hit by lower commodity prices which slowed growth in the last few years, cutting government revenues.
According to World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, Albert Zeufack, the Sub Saharan Africa region’s growth recovery would partly be driven by the continent’s two largest economies – Nigeria and South Africa – exiting recession.
He said the two countries needed “deeper reforms” to get back to pre-2014 levels of growth and their political uncertainty needed to be reined in.
He said they made up about half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP growth.
The World Bank said Nigeria’s economy, the largest in the continent, was expected to expand by one per cent in 2017 while South Africa’s economy, hit by political worries, was expected to grow just 0.6 per cent this year.
