When talking about economic development in a continent or region, the benchmark comes from the biggest countries both in economy and population. But sometimes, these nations encounter problems which lag their economic progress, influencing the overall economic perspective of the region.
Last year in Africa, while not the greatest for some nations, still proved to be valuable for many other smaller countries that saw tremendous amounts of growth and investment in key areas.
When the major public talks about African development, data is usually observed from the Southern African region and in some cases Northern Africa. Central, West and East African are usually forgotten, simply because of their turbulent past and the vision of now development in the region. But this vision is simply wrong, countries within that region have shown in 2019 their enormous growth potential, with some countries showing a growth of over 6% and a prediction to maintain this growth rate over the next 5 years. Nowadays a respectable growth of a developing country is usually of 2-2.5%, with some countries achieving a 3% in a very good year.
It is predicted that during 2020, over 11 African Nation will surpass the 6% club once again. The biggest rate is 8.2%, predicted to be achieved by c. Following a close rate come Rwanda, with a predicted growth rate forecast of 8.1% in 2020. Over the next five years it is unlikely that the same rate will be maintained, statistics by the IMF and World bank show a possible decrease in the rate of both countries, but an increase in the growth rate of other nations; most notably Senegal, an increase of around1.5% from 2019 to the 5 year forecast.
There are some factors that lead to the predicted forecast. The biggest motive should be the increasing number of investments, made either by other nations and NGOs or by private firms. Recently, the amount invested by Venture Capital into major African startups was released. The trend is usually that countries that received the largest amount of investment were nations with large Fintech markets. The major part of the companies that received investments focused in the area of Mobile Money, Payment services and other currency transaction related activities.
