NKC African Economics

Gabon - We trimmed Gabon’s GDP forecast for 2021 substantially as the absence of a clear vaccination strategy, weak prospects for oil production and reintroduction of containment measures weigh on nea...

Africa – Weekly Covid-19 update, April 9. East Africa – Negotiations over Nile dam fail and sabres rattle. Lesotho – Economic output tumbles in the fourth quarter. Morocco – Liberties going backwards....

Libya suffered a massive 60.3% contraction in GDP in 2020 as conflict caused oil production to slump. A dramatic bounce-back is anticipated this year as oil production returns to pre-conflict levels a...

South Africa’s gross reserves declined further to $53.0bn in March; likewise, the international liquidity position fell to $50.9bn. According to the press release from the South African Reserve Bank (...

Talks between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) concluded on April 6 with no discernible progress and plenty of vitriol. The four-day tête-à-têt...

As of Thursday, April 8, there were a total of 346,650 active cases of Covid-19 (confirmed cases minus deaths and recoveries) in Africa. This is a weekly increase in active cases on the continent (+25...

In March, Senegal was rocked by the worst protests the country has seen since 2012. While the proximate cause of the unrest was a criminal charge laid against opposition leader Ousmane Sonko – which m...

Headline inflation eased by 0.1 ppt to 3.2% y-o-y in March, according to Tanzania’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The deceleration was driven by a decline in non-food items price inflation, spe...

Tunisia’s National Commission for combating the Covid-19 pandemic decided on stricter measures to curb the spread of the virus, following a recent rise in the number of recorded daily infections. The...

The South African Recovery Tracker (SART) rose by 4.3 pts to 82.6 pts in March. The latest rise is a result of improvements in mobility, Google Trend searches and a decrease in new Covid-19 cases.

Data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) shows that real GDP grew by 1.6% y-o-y in Q4 2020 from a 0.5% y-o-y contraction in Q3 2020. Despite the recovery in Q4 2020, the economy still contract...

Real GDP (non-seasonally adjusted) contracted by 15.3% y-o-y in Q4 2020, compared with a revised contraction of 9.8% y-o-y in Q3 2020, according to Lesotho’s Bureau of Statistics. The contraction indi...

A series of recent events shows a fairly rapid degradation in civil liberties in Morocco. On Tuesday, April 6, a video circulated showing the very heavy-handed arrest of Nezha Majdi, a schoolteacher,...

Manufacturing production still not gaining any traction Rand oscillates in a tight range US jobless claims rise unexpectedly German factory orders growth remains robust