The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today maintained its growth forecast for sub-Saharan Africa at 3.8% this year and 4% in 2023, noting that the country outlook remains "unchanged or positive."

"The outlook for countries in the Middle East and Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa remains, on average, unchanged or positive, reflecting the effects of high fossil fuel and metal prices for some commodity-exporting countries," reads the update to the World Economic Outlook report, released today in Washington.

For sub-Saharan Africa's two largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, the IMF maintains Nigeria's growth at 3.4% this year and moves up a tenth in its estimate of economic expansion next year, now at 3.2%, while for South Africa, the forecast improves from 1.9% to 2.3% this year and holds at 1.4% for 2023.

In an update heavily dominated by the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the IMF warns that "low-income countries, whose populations were already experiencing severe malnutrition and excess mortality before the war, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have been particularly severely impacted."

At the time of the release of the Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, in late April, the advisor to the IMF's African Department Alex Segura said, in an interview with Lusa, that the impact of the war in Ukraine was "very negative and very serious in Africa" due to already existing vulnerabilities.

"The impact on Africa of the war in Ukraine is very negative, it's very serious, because the low-income countries already had more limited mechanisms to fight the covid-19 pandemic, and they had a major shock, with much less developed mechanisms than the advanced countries to manage the pandemic."

Now, continued the African department's advisor, "they arrive in a situation of great vulnerability, and the IMF's main concern is the increase in fuel and food prices," something that has come about very significantly since then.

Ukraine and Russia are two of the main producers of cereals, namely wheat, which is the staple food in several African countries, particularly in the north of the continent. (noam)