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Africa Chart Pack (Mar. 2024) …
28th March 2024
Africa Chart Pack (Feb. 2024) …
28th February 2024
Africa Chart Pack (Jan. 2024) …
31st January 2024
This is a special Global Economics Chart Pack that provides clients with key analysis to make sense of the macro and market impact of the disruptions to maritime shipping. The charts in this document come from our brand-new shipping dashboard , which …
25th January 2024
Africa Chart Pack (Dec. 2023) …
18th December 2023
Economic growth across Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to pick up in 2024, but a challenging external environment means that balance of payments positions will remain under strain and fiscal and monetary policy will need to stay tight. Our GDP growth …
28th November 2023
Economic growth across Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to pick up over the coming quarters, but a challenging external environment means that balance of payments positions will remain under strain and fiscal and monetary policy will need to stay tight. Our …
31st October 2023
29th September 2023
Sub-Saharan Africa is set to record its weakest growth (outside the pandemic) since 2016 this year as the drags from domestic headwinds are exacerbated by a less favourable external environment. Our GDP growth forecasts across the region are generally …
31st August 2023
Sub-Saharan Africa is set to record its weakest growth this year, outside of the pandemic, since 2016 as the drags from domestic headwinds are exacerbated by a less favourable external environment. Our GDP growth forecasts across the region are generally …
26th July 2023
Risk premia have fallen across the region over the past month. In the region’s largest economy, Nigeria, that has come on the back of a marked policy shift since President Tinubu took office in late-May. Costly fuel subsidies have been removed and the …
28th June 2023
Central banks in the region’s two largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, both hiked interest rates this month and, whereas attention elsewhere is turning to rate cuts, the risks seem to be tilted towards further increases in both countries. …
25th May 2023
Persistent and deepening electricity outages in South Africa are wreaking economic havoc. Almost half of generating capacity was offline this month, triggering severe “loadshedding”. Output in energy-intensive sectors – such as mining and manufacturing – …
27th April 2023
Financial markets across Sub-Saharan Africa have struggled – and have underperformed their EM peers – since the global banking sector turmoil erupted. Amid broad risk-off sentiment, African sovereign dollar bonds have sold off nearly across the board and …
23rd March 2023
Sub-Saharan Africa’s two biggest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, are both facing slow-burning debt problems. In Nigeria at least, elections on Saturday offer an opportunity to shift towards greater fiscal discipline – especially if opposition …
24th February 2023
While the economic outlook in much of the world has turned less downbeat in recent weeks, the prospects for Sub-Saharan Africa’s two biggest economies have, if anything, got gloomier due to homegrown economic troubles. In South Africa, power cuts – a …
31st January 2023
The performance of African economies diverged early this year, but the latest data provide clearer signs that growth across the region is now slowing. Economic weakness seems most pronounced in Ghana, where the impact of the country’s sovereign debt …
20th December 2022
Most central banks across Sub-Saharan Africa raised interest rates over the past month and, in contrast to many other parts of the emerging world, we think tightening cycles will last a while longer. Interest rates were hiked in Nigeria, South Africa, …
29th November 2022
The past month has brought further signs that economies across Sub-Saharan Africa are in the midst of a slowdown. The latest activity data out of South Africa suggest that, after GDP contracted in Q2, its economy fell into a technical recession in Q3. …
31st October 2022
Just like their peers in advanced economies, monetary policymakers across Sub-Saharan Africa have turned more hawkish recently. Central banks in South Africa and Nigeria hiked interest rates aggressively this month. Reining in inflation is clearly the …
29th September 2022
Relatively peaceful election proceedings in Kenya and Angola this month have provided a lift to investor sentiment. But with the respective losing presidential candidates challenging official results through the courts, the risk of violence lingers. …
31st August 2022
For a major net oil exporter, Nigeria’s worsening economic struggles in the current high oil price environment are striking. Low oil production, which was 30% below the country’s OPEC+ quota in June, has curbed oil export revenues. Coming alongside …
27th July 2022
The hawkish turn by DM central banks over the past month has further soured investor risk appetite, and capital inflows into African economies are likely to have slowed. Countries with large external financing requirements, and heavy debt burdens …
30th June 2022
African central banks have turned up their hawkish noises over the past month. Policymakers in Nigeria and Kenya delivered their first interest rate hikes following pandemic-era cuts. In South Africa, the Reserve Bank stepped up the pace of its tightening …
31st May 2022
Fiscal positions across Sub-Saharan Africa have been a persistent source of concern since the onset of the pandemic – and in some cases, even before. And the commodity price moves resulting from the war in Ukraine will be unfavourable for public finances …
28th April 2022
Spillovers from the war in Ukraine will have a varied impact across Sub-Saharan Africa. Large oil producers such as Nigeria and Angola are benefitting from the surge in global oil prices but, for the rest of the region, it is worsening their terms of …
31st March 2022
Elevated commodity prices on the back of the Russia-Ukraine crisis will almost certainly add to inflationary pressures across Sub-Saharan Africa. High prices for energy, metals and agricultural products that African countries export seem to have shielded …
28th February 2022
Waves of the Omicron variant that spread across the region in December have subsided sharply in recent weeks. In South Africa, cases have fallen by over 85% since their mid-December peak, and the latest outbreaks have receded with similar speed elsewhere …
31st January 2022
Much attention has been devoted to the Omicron-fuelled fourth COVID-19 wave ripping through South Africa but cases have picked up elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa as well, with especially sharp rises in Nigeria and Namibia. There are early signs of virus …
16th December 2021
The emergence of the Omicron strain of COVID-19 , a worrying new variant first detected in southern Africa, has already rattled financial markets. The economic impact on Sub-Saharan Africa and around the world will depend on how transmissible it is, the …
30th November 2021
COVID-19 vaccine coverage remains pitifully low across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, with less than 10% of populations having received at least a first dose in most countries. But there are signs that things may be slowly turning a corner. The rate of …
28th October 2021
The threat of messy outcomes to Sub-Saharan Africa’s debt problems seems to have diminished recently. In Zambia, the new administration vowed to tackle debt problems and press on with restructuring talks under the G20’s Common Framework. And Ethiopia, …
30th September 2021
The evidence from the latest COVID-19 waves sweeping through Sub-Saharan Africa point to a smaller economic blow compared to previous waves. Of course, there is a considerable degree of divergence, especially between countries imposing harsh restrictions …
27th August 2021
The highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 seems to be dominant now across much of Sub-Saharan Africa and is driving new waves in many of the large economies. South Africa appears to be over the worst of its latest outbreak, although it now has to …
29th July 2021
Worries about a third wave of COVID-19 in the region have intensified in the past month and the tightening of lockdown measures in some countries – most notably South Africa – will weigh on recoveries. As things stand, surges in cases appear concentrated …
24th June 2021
Currencies of the two biggest economies in Africa have had contrasting fortunes recently, with Nigeria’s official naira exchange rate recently devalued but the South African rand soaring on the back of higher metals prices. Nigerian policymakers have …
27th May 2021
The sharp rises in copper and iron ore prices this month will have given a much-needed boost to African producers such as Zambia and South Africa. Gold also traded higher in April compared to March, supporting recoveries in the likes of Côte d’Ivoire, …
29th April 2021
Central banks in Sub-Saharan Africa bucked a recent “trend” of interest rate hikes in other emerging markets this month. Policymakers in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Angola all kept their benchmark rates unchanged. The backdrop of rising US Treasury …
30th March 2021
The recent rally across almost all commodity prices is good news for resource-rich economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balance sheets in oil producing countries like Nigeria and Angola will get a boost from the pick-up in oil prices. And a surge in …
26th February 2021
Governments across Sub-Saharan Africa seem to have mixed plans for fiscal policy this year. There are signs that policymakers in some countries – including Nigeria, Ghana and perhaps Kenya – will continue to provide stimulus in 2021, reducing the risk of …
28th January 2021
The latest national accounts data from Sub-Saharan Africa tell a story of the good, the bad and the ugly. South Africa’s economy mounted a surprisingly strong recovery in Q3, and a solid rebound in Nigeria’s non-oil sector more than offset weakness in the …
18th December 2020
Encouraging news about highly effective coronavirus vaccine trials has brightened Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic outlook. However, the region is facing higher barriers compared to many other parts of the world due to a lack of advance purchase agreements …
27th November 2020
Political developments dominating the news in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past month threaten to add to the headwinds facing economic recoveries. Protests in Nigeria that were initially focused on police brutality have morphed into broader discontent with …
29th October 2020
Nigeria is facing an uphill battle to breathe life into its economic recovery. Following a sharp 6.1% y/y fall in GDP in Q2, more recent figures suggest that activity remains muted. Admittedly, Google mobility data suggest that visits to retail and …
29th September 2020
Many African policymakers have further eased coronavirus -related restrictions in recent weeks, but there are signs that economic recoveries have stalled at the start of Q3. High-frequency data from South Africa, where Covid-19 cases surged in July, give …
27th August 2020
The past month has brought further signs that countries across Sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to bring the coronavirus under control. Of course, the true extent of the spread of the virus is muddied by low levels of testing. South Africa has accounted …
31st July 2020
The recovery in global risk appetite and in commodity prices has eased strains in balance of payments across the region. But conditions remain much worse than the they were before the crisis flared up. And while many EM sovereigns have tapped global …
23rd June 2020
Governments across much of Sub-Saharan Africa have moved towards lifting coronavirus containment measures in recent weeks but, with the exception of South Africa, this has much more to do with economic concerns than success in controlling the virus’ …
29th May 2020
The risk of further sovereign defaults has risen across the region this month. Rwanda has joined Zambia in seeking to restructure its sovereign debt. And the collapse in oil prices will put more pressure on already fragile external and fiscal positions in …
30th April 2020
The rapid pace of the economic and market disruptions caused by the coronavirus mean that data released in recent months probably offer little insight into the current state of African economies. Accordingly, this publication will focus on the most timely …
26th March 2020
