Africa Profile
A gradual recovery in some commodity prices and continued reform efforts are part of the new Africa narrative, but risks remain.
The North African region has been ravaged by the Delta variant over the past quarter. While most countries have just come out of their deadliest waves since the start of the pandemic, trouble is on the horizon in Egypt, where the highly transmissible variant was only recently detected. Against the backdrop of a favourable external commodity price environment, we revised our economic growth forecast for 2021 higher for all the sub-regions of Africa, with the exception of East Africa, with prospects of slightly stronger growth in Kenya more than offset by a deterioration in Uganda’s growth outlook. (Source: Africa Quarterly Update, September 2021.)