Analytiker: Utmaningarna för Afrika under 2018

The economy of Africa consists of the trade, industry, agriculture, and human resources of the continent. As of 2012, approximately 1.07 billion people were living in 54 different countries in Africa. Africa is a resource-rich continent. Recent growth has been due to growth in sales in commodities, services, and manufacturing. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, is expected to reach a GDP of $29 trillion by 2050. In March 2013, Africa was identified as the world's poorest inhabited continent: Africa's entire combined GDP is barely a third of the United States' GDP; however, the World Bank expects that most African countries will reach "middle income" status (defined as at least US$1,000 per person a year) by 2025 if current growth rates continue. In 2013, Africa was the world’s fastest-growing continent at 5.6% a year, and GDP is expected to rise by an average of over 6% a year between 2013 and 2023. In 2017, the African Development Bank reported Africa to be the world’s second-fastest growing economy, and estimates that average growth will rebound to 3.4% in 2017, while growth is expected to increase by 4.3% in 2018. Growth has been present throughout the continent, with over one-third of Sub-Saharan African countries posting 6% or higher growth rates, and another 40% growing between 4% to 6% per year. Several international business observers have also named Africa as the future economic growth engine of the world.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. Countries in Africa are sorted according to data from the International Monetary Fund. The figures presented here do not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currency. Such fluctuations may change a country's ranking from one year to the next, even though they often make little or no difference to the standard of living of its population. Some countries may have citizens that are on average wealthy. These countries/regions could appear in this list as having a small GDP. This would be because the country/region listed has a small population, and therefore small total economy; the GDP is calculated as the population times market value of the goods and services produced per person in the country. These figures should therefore be used with caution. Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made on the basis of purchasing power parity (PPP), to adjust for differences in the cost of living in different countries. PPP largely removes the exchange rate problem, but has its own drawbacks; it does not reflect the value of economic output in international trade, and it also requires more estimation than nominal GDP. On the whole, PPP per capita figures are more narrowly spread than nominal GDP per capita figures.