12 of world’s top 20 fastest-growing economies in Africa – AfDB president

The African Development Bank's 2026 Macroeconomic Performance and Outlook report, released on 30 March, carried a striking headline: twelve of the world's twenty fastest-growing economies last year were African. The continent's real GDP expanded by 4.2 percent in 2025, up from 3.1 percent in 2024 and ahead of the global average.

Growth exceeded five percent in twenty-two countries and topped seven percent in six.

The AfDB now projects continental growth at 4.3 percent in 2026 and 4.5 percent in 2027 — a sustained acceleration that has no equivalent outside Asia. Nigeria is not part of that story, at least not yet. The AfDB projects Nigerian GDP growth at 3.2 percent in 2025 and 3.1 percent in 2026, roughly a percentage point below the continental average. The economies setting Africa's pace are overwhelmingly in East Africa: Ethiopia at 9.8 percent, Rwanda at 7.5 percent, Uganda at 6.4 percent. These are countries that have absorbed reform costs early and are now compounding on a cleaner base. Nigeria's own reform programme — fuel subsidy removal, foreign exchange unification, sustained monetary tightening — has done the necessary work of stabilisation.

The macroeconomy is no longer in crisis. But stabilisation and growth are different things, and the gap between them is where Nigeria currently sits. The AfDB does project Nigeria reclaiming third place among Africa's largest economies by GDP in 2026, supported by rising oil output and a more competitive exchange rate. That matters for the headline — but GDP size is a different measure from growth rate, and it is growth rate that determines where capital allocates next. The practical implication for businesses and investors is this: Africa is no longer a uniform risk story.

Capital that tracks growth differentials will increasingly distinguish between East African compounders and reform-phase economies like Nigeria that have not yet converted structural correction into expansion. Nigeria's window to close that gap depends on whether the reform dividend — cheaper imports from a stable naira, improved fiscal space from subsidy savings, renewed investor confidence — begins to show in consumption and investment data through 2026.