Africa’s Economic Prospects and Global Geopolitical Tensions: Navigating the Challenges Ahead

2023-11-11 17:27:30

While global geopolitical and trade tensions are increasing, Africa’s economic prospects remain mediocre, notes journalist Marie de Vergès in a recent column in the newspaper Le Monde.

“A lost decade in terms of growth,” the World Bank warned in its autumn report at the beginning of October, GDP per capita having stagnated on the continent since 2015. “Africa needs international aid to avoid a decade lost”, Hanan Morsy, chief economist of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, also warned last May.

After the successive crises of recent years, “the continent must now deal with high interest rates […] and therefore more expensive loans to repay”, writes Marie de Vergès. Half of low-income countries are now on the verge of default.

Added to these economic difficulties are geopolitical tensions which are weakening the continent. As Guinea-Bissau economist Carlos Lopes pointed out, “new rules are being enacted, methods and standards imposed, products banned.” But “it’s a game played between powerful countries,” he recalls, with other countries then having no other choice but to align themselves.

The growing trade competition between China and the United States also concerns Africa, whose countries “should not have to choose friends or enemies”, according to comments made in Marrakech by Vera Songwe, former executive secretary of the UNECA.

In short, global geopolitical tensions are an additional threat to vulnerable African economies, as Marie de Vergès points out in her column for Le Monde.

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