Published on 24/04/2025
World Bank has worsened most of its economic GDP growth forecasts for Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, keeping Equatorial Guinea in recession, albeit a smaller one and forecasting higher inflation than it predicted in October.
A comparison between the forecasts for 2025 made in October last year and those made this year has only Cape Verde and Equatorial Guinea improving their economic growth estimates, although Equatorial Guinea is still in a recession expected to measure 3.1% in 2025, compared to the previous 4.4% forecast.
As for Angola, World Bank now predicts that the second largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa will grow by just 2.7%, compared to a 2.9% growth estimated in October 2024. It is also making a strong revision to inflation, which was forecast six months ago to be 16.1%, but is now 25%, keeping Angola among the 14 countries out of the 47 in the region that have double-digit inflation.
The World Bank says that Angola, together with Nigeria and South Africa, represents a drag on the region’s growth, pointing out that, without these three countries, “the region’s growth should increase from 4% in 2024 to 4.5% this year, accelerating further to 5.6% in 2026 and 2027”.
Growth in these three major economies is expected to accelerate from 2.5% in 2024 to 2.9% this year, and remain at 3.1% over the next two years, still below that recorded between 2000 and 2019, when the average was 4.4% per year.
In the report, the World Bank also revises Mozambique’s economic growth downwards from 4% to 3%, worsening the inflation forecast from 2.8% to 5.5% this year.
The World Bank’s outlook for Cape Verde has however improved; it is expected to grow by 5.9% this year, one percentage point more than the forecast made in October last year.
Guinea-Bissau is expected to register an expansion of 5.1%, practically the same as the 5% forecast made in October, while São Tomé and Príncipe sees a slight downward revision, from 3.3% to 3.1%.
