CAPE TOWN: Africa’s overall economy should advance in 2015, expanding by 4.5%, showing resilience despite weak commodity prices and the devastating Ebola epidemic, an annual report published Monday said. And future growth could be spurred by the continent’s population doubling to two billion over the next 35 years, repeating in Africa the economic boom seen in Asia’s biggest countries.
“Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to strengthen to 4.5% in 2015 and 5% in 2016 after subdued expansion in 2013 (of 3.5%) and 2014 (3.9%),” said the report, co-authored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the African Development Bank and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
The continent has so far been “relatively resilient to the sharp fall in international commodity prices,” said the report, such as crude prices which dropped more than 50% between June and January. And if the commodity prices remain low, the report warned that the economies of resource-rich countries, such as leading oil exporters Nigeria and Angola, may slow down as their governments will inevitably have to trim spending. The latest forecast is a downward revision from projections made in 2014 which suggested Africa’s economy was going to expand by 5.7% this year.
