The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has launched Africa-wide Focus Reports designed to deepen policy dialogue on the macroeconomic performance and outlook of individual countries and to act as an indispensable tool for policy makers, government and development partners.
The reports, released on Wednesday in line with the theme of the 2024 African Economic Outlook report titled, “Driving Africa’s Transformation: The Reform of the Global Financial Architecture,” are to give deeper country-by-country specific dynamics and insights.
The African Economic Outlook report, which is issued annually, also provides timely evidence and analysis on the continent’s growth, empowering African policymakers to make informed decisions.
“Growth performance and outlook vary across the 54 African countries of the report, reflecting differences in economic structure, commodity dependence, and policies,” Prof. Kevin Chika Urama, Chief Economist & Vice President for Economic Governance and Knowledge Management the AfDB said while launching the report
“The 2024 reports assesses the experiences of individual countries in accessing finance necessary to fund their structural transformation and call for an overhaul of the global financial architecture to help turn around African economies.
“The reports make bold recommendations for financing structural transformation at country level through reforms of the global financial architecture to better respond to African countries’ growing development financing needs, exacerbated by recurrent global and domestic shocks.”
All 54 reports document funding needs and gaps as well as inadequacies of the current global financial system in supporting Africa’s structural transformation up to 2063. The reports make recommendations across five key areas:
“Leveraging Private Sector Financing, the private sector will remain a key partner in financing African economies. Countries need allow greater private sector participation in the economy to complement public investments, particularly in areas with high social returns such as climate action and human capital development.
“In summary, these reports contain pragmatic policies (short, medium and long-term) to accelerate African countries’ economic growth and structural transformation.
“They also provide governments and potential investors with up-to-date, accurate data to inform policy and investment decisions,” he added.