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Overall, business momentum eased across most of the reviewed markets in January, with seven of the eight economies registering a softer PMI reading compared with December, except South Africa.
The projected slowdown comes even as macroeconomic conditions stabilise and investor sentiment improves amid ongoing reforms in West Africa’s largest economies.
While overall conditions continued to improve, firms reported weaker gains in employment and purchasing activity, reflecting slower order inflows, a drawdown in backlogs and concerns about excess inputs.
While Egypt’s PMI fell into contractionary territory in January, S&P noted that the reading remained higher than the long-run average, indicative of a strong pace of non-oil GDP growth.
The tool, developed by the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions (AAMFI), is intended to help regions lenders coordinate support for countries under strain and reduce the risk of protracted disputes during debt restructurings.
On the news and on paper, the country’s economy is recovering and stabilising, but it appears that people’s bellies and traders’ inventories are yet to see this in reality.
Nigeria’s 2026 fiscal strategy hinges on tighter cash control, selective divestments and PPPs. Global precedents offer hope, but execution risks could test credibility and growth.
The statistics bureau said the moderation in Kenya’s inflation partly reflected base effects, following relatively higher prices during the same period last year.
Official data show Zimbabwe’s annual inflation slowed sharply to 4.1% in January, from 15% in December and 10.1% a year earlier, as the country’s gold-backed currency strengthened on the back of record bullion prices.
Over the past decade, China’s lending to Africa has plummeted, with annual commitments falling below $5 billion since 2020, after consistently exceeding $10 billion between 2012 and 2018, as the world’s No. 2 economy increasingly prioritises strategic engagements.
The upgrade underpins expected progress on tax revenue collection and improved fiscal performance, alongside favorable terms of trade and export volumes supported by ongoing structural reforms backed by the IMF.
The Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Wamkele Mene, and Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, will headline the 2026 edition of the Africa Business Convention (ABC)
For a long time, Africa’s investment landscape has been framed as a market-size problem. Over time, it appeared that the solution was simply to scale up: bigger populations, faster urbanisation, rising consumption. Yet capital inflows remained uneven.
To avoid an artificial spike in December’s headline inflation, the NBS replaced the single-month reference point, set as December 2024 during last year’s rebasing, to a 12-month index reference period averaging all months of 2024.
When Musa, a food commodities trader in southwest Nigeria, secured a buyer in Accra, the distance looked manageable. The route hugged the Atlantic coastline, demand was strong, and the margins worked on paper. Then came the borders.
Zambia’s external debt rose to $16bn in Q3 2025, driven by growing reliance on multilateral loans as market access stayed limited after its 2020 default.
For most investors and exporters, trade agreements matter only when they start changing costs, timelines, and risk. Until then, they remain political documents. Nigeria’s engagement with the African Continental Free Trade Area largely fell into the second category for years.
The sustained slowdown marks a sharp turnaround for the West African nation, which was grappling with inflation of 23.8% as recently as December 2024 amid currency pressures.
With businesses and households still recovering from recent aftershocks of elevated inflation and the removal of fuel subsidies, CPPE argues that full and simultaneous compliance across all sectors of the economy is unlikely.
According to Stanbic’s latest PMI survey, nearly 59% of respondents projected sustained improvement in business activity over the next 12 months, supported by plans to boost expansion spending and product exports.