African Markets Revealed
AFRICAN MARKETS REVEALED SEPTEMBER 2020 • Steven Barrow • Ferishka Bharuth • Mulalo Madula • Angeline Moseki • Fausio Mussa • Jibran Qureishi • Dmitry Shishkin • Gbolahan Taiwo www.standardbank.com/research 1 Standard Bank African Markets Revealed September 2020 Recovering, but not out of the woods • The worst of the pandemic will arguably be reflected in Q2:20 GDP growth outcomes. Of the countries in our coverage, we see only a handful of economies escaping recession in 2020. • Economic growth in Q2:20 contracted by 6.1% y/y, 3.3% y/y, and 3.2% y/y in Nigeria, Mozambique and Uganda respectively. The Ghanaian economy too contracted by 3.2% y/y in Q2:20, even worse than the 0.4% y/y contraction that we forecast for our bear scenario in the May edition of this publication. • The more diversified economies and those with large subsistence agriculture sectors could post mild, yet positive, growth in 2020. Most East African countries fall into this bracket. Egypt too might also avoid a technical recession this year. • However, Nigeria, Angola, Zambia and even Botswana, being overly reliant on just a few sectors to drive growth, will most likely contract this year. The only question is by how much? • Tourism-dependent economies will take a hit. We still don’t see any meaningful recovery in tourism until a global vaccine is at hand. The weakness in the tourism sector is mostly a BOP problem rather than a growth problem for many African countries. However, the service value chain that relies on a robust tourism sector too, will most likely weigh down growth in these economies.
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