Africa is too often talked about as a single place, when it is in reality 54 countries across a geographic area larger than the US, EU, India, and China combined. McKinsey’s latest report entitled Reimagining economic growth in Africa: Turning diversity into opportunity dives deep into these differences. TL;DR, the one graphic below summarizes the differences in economic growth across the continent (with the countries highlighted in yellow being those where Africa Eats’ bizi are located):
The size of the bubble is the size of the GDP of the country. Slowdowns in South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria lower the reported “African” metrics, as those are the three largest economies on the continent. Those slowdowns hide some of the fastest growing economies of the world, such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya, four of those being the four founding members of the East Africa Federation, which is heading toward a political union to rival Ethiopia and Nigeria as largest economies in Africa.
Do also note that the vertical dotted line is the 4.2% average growth rate, not the 1% or 2% growth rate commonly seen in the US or EU, and far from the 0% line that one might assume as the vertical axis.
