United Nations Economic Commission for Africa – författare

The 2023 Economic Report on Africa focuses on the impact of multiple and recurring global shocks on African economies and the extent to which these shocks impede Africa's prospects for achieving the targets set in the Sustainable Development Goals. The principal lessons are that shocks of various magnitude, duration and recurrence have played a major part in shaping economic performance in the last several decades, undermining Africa's aspirations for sustained growth and rapid economic transformation that could benefit from demographic (youth bulge) and geographic (urbanization) trends. In addition, successive shocks have had scarring effects that have made it difficult for African economies to recover fully even after a short-lived shock such as the Global Financial Crisis. More important, the damages caused by shocks could morph into other domains such as political instability and conflict, undermining recovery and resilience to future shocks. The report also emphasizes the opportunities presented by the shocks to implement long overdue structural and public finance reforms that take full advantage of such regional initiatives as the African Continental Free Trade Area.

The focus of this issue of the Economic Governance Report (EGR II) is on tax expenditures, where governments provide allowances to potential taxpayers that reduce the effective tax base and actual tax revenues collected. The revenue lost through tax expenditures could have been more judiciously allocated among the country's different development priorities under prudent oversight, ensuring that no one is left behind. This report provides a framework for the effective governance of tax expenditures, including the assessment of the fiscal costs of tax expenditures and reporting. The framework has the potential to inform government consideration of the value-for-money propositions of the expenditures, and to result in expunging unproductive incentives thereby boosting revenue collection. It can also contribute to boosting the continent's domestic resource mobilization, reducing its vulnerability to debt and volatile external financing, and improve the prospects of meeting its development goals.

The Economic Report on Africa 2024 lays out the case for investing in a just and sustainable transition to meet the aspirations of the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063 for building a prosperous Africa. Building on country case studies and the findings and recommendations of previous Reports touching on structural transformations and sustainability transitions, the 2024 Report assesses the conditions for pursuing that transition in Africa and for catalysing the needed investments. African countries can leverage the global boom in "green" minerals and their large renewable-energy resources, tropical forests, and marine ecosystems to export premium carbon credits, generating finance for sustainable investments. International financing through multilateral development banks and other mechanisms for climate action could leverage additional funding from other sources.

The Economic Report on Africa 2025 (ERA 2025) examines AfCFTA’s implementation, highlighting achievements, challenges, and its potential to reshape Africa’s economic landscape. The report underscores AfCFTA’s role in addressing key challenges such as energy access, food security, industrialization, and digital trade. By fostering intra-African trade, the agreement can reduce commodity dependence, boost manufacturing, and strengthen Africa’s position in global value chains. Additionally, AfCFTA enhances Africa’s resilience amid global economic fragmentation by deepening regional integration and strengthening trade ties with emerging markets. To fully realize AfCFTA’s potential, Africa must undertake strategic investments, implement well-coordinated policies, and pursue structural reforms. If effectively executed, AfCFTA could significantly enhance trade, drive economic diversification, and position Africa as a global growth hub, contributing to the vision of Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want.

This publication is compiled to provide quality and timely statistical data for the monitoring, evaluation, analysis, research, and promotion of the intra-African trade. It is intended to serve the needs of researchers, policy makers, and the public who work on trade issues. This seventh edition of the Compendium presents foreign trade data in sixteen chapters for all African countries for the period 2004 to 2012. Information on total, share, direction, and evolution of African trade is provided. Focusing on intra-African trade, related statistical data of trade flows are grouped by region, subregions, and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in Africa, a unique feature that has been found nowhere else. It is hoped that the Compendium will provide the needed support to ongoing efforts aimed at ensuring the integration of the African continent.

The Yearbook series is a result of collaborative efforts by major African regional organizations to set up a joint data collection mechanism of socioeconomic data on African countries, as well as the development of a harmonized database. It seeks to promote wider use of country data, reduce costs, significantly improve the availability and quality of the data, and lead to better monitoring of development initiatives on the continent.The data in this issue of the Yearbook are arranged generally for the years 2006-2014, or for the last eight years for which data are available. It is published in a single volume consisting of two parts: a set of summary tables followed by country profiles.

The African Statistical Yearbook is a publication jointly produced by Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Union Commission (AUC), presenting time-series data over the latest nine years for which data are available, showing how African countries performed in several economic and social thematic areas. The summary tables present selected standardized indicators for all African countries to enable comparisons between countries and the country profiles present indicators grouped into nine thematic areas: these are not necessarily used for comparison between countries.

The seventh edition of Assessing Regional Integration in Africa (ARIA VII) examines how the three elements of regional integration, innovation and competitiveness are interlinked. It explores the prospects for harnessing them within the framework of Africa’s normative regional integration development model oriented to foster structural change. Evidence presented in ARIA VII for a sample of 15 African countries for the period between 1995 and 2010 shows that growth in most of the sample countries has been achieved through factor accumulation rather than through significant improvements with input combinations that are associated with innovation. Based on theoretical and empirical insights, the report makes recommendations as to how further regional integration boost Africa’s capacity for innovation and competitiveness. In addition, the report provides an overview of regional integration trends in Africa, including an analysis of data from the African Regional Integration Index.

The 2016 edition of the Economic Report on Africa (ERA 2016) focuses on greening industrialization and highlights sustainable and people-centred industrialization. Given the impacts of climate change, resource scarcities and environmental degradation, measures for de-risking Africa’s development are critical. The form and pattern of Africa’s industrialization, shaped by its abundant natural resources especially water and renewable energy sources, are discussed within the scale and scope that tackles inequality and promotes inclusivity. The report employs a value chain approach in analyzing the decoupling needs of key economic sectors towards low carbon intensive economic growth in Africa. Country case studies are used in demonstrating ongoing greening activities across key sectors. This is supported with modelling of future development scenarios under ‘Business-as Usual’ and “Greening” to demonstrate the additionality of greening policies and investments in making a business case to support the industrialization and transformation momentum in the continent’s development agenda. The report therefore provides evidence-based information to policymakers and other stakeholders on greening Africa’s industrialization to achieve inclusive and sustainable structural transformation and growth on the continent.

The 2019 edition of the Economic Report on Africa explores the intricate terrain of revenue collection on the continent and makes salient recommendations to help African countries attain the SDGs and the aspirations of Agenda 2063 by expanding their fiscal space and how. It identifies several quick wins in Africa’s pursuit of additional fiscal space to finance achievement of the SDGs and the aspirations of Agenda 2063. The Report calls on African countries to stabilize the macroeconomic environment, it advises against using competitive tax breaks for attracting international companies, and calls on African countries and their global partners to muster external public and private resources, at the same time, urges countries to pay attention to debt sustainability issues.

This publication examines the role of innovative finance for business sector development as a pathway to financing and achieving Africa's sustainable development and Agenda 2063. It articulates how innovative sources of finance can be utilized to finance Africa's business sector development, taking into account innovations in the financial services sector and financial technologies as one of the main mechanisms for transitioning African countries to inclusive economic growth and sustainable development. The publication further provides strategic guidance to the business sector decision makers and policy makers in Africa on critical regulations and measures needed to be deployed for the creation and use of innovative financing mechanisms by the private sector to leverage increased investment and financing of SDGs/infrastructure, enhanced productivity, job creation and prosperity.

The tenth edition of the report on Assessing Regional Integration in Africa (ARIA X) is on the theme: "Africa's services trade liberalization and integration under the AfCFTA". The report seeks to deepen understanding and appreciation of the critical role of services to trade, production and the economy in Africa. It critically analyzes the types of approaches to liberalization of trade in services and regional regulatory cooperation under the AfCFTA, which have the most potential to support Africa's development, including through the enhancement of intra-African trade in services, enabling of better and more effective integration into regional and global value chains, the enforcement of both public and privates sector capacities and overall greater competitiveness in an increasingly digitalizing global economy.

The report applies a poverty-vulnerability-resilience framework to examine the impact of COVID-19 on household well-being in Africa. The report emphasizes the dynamic nature of poverty since some of the poor are not poor all the time, though they are often vulnerable because of exposure to a multitude of risks that can push them below the poverty line and increase chronic poverty. Reducing vulnerability to risks is critical for enhancing well-being and reducing future poverty

The Yearbook series is a result of joint efforts by major African regional organizations to set up a joint data collection mechanism of socioeconomic data on African countries as well as the development of a common harmonized database. This Yearbook is meant to break with the practices of the past where each regional/subregional organization was publishing statistical data on African countries of the continent in an inefficient way, leading to duplication of efforts, inefficient use of scarce resources, increased burden on countries and sending different signals to users involved in tracking development efforts on the continent.