AfDB Launches 2018 Edition of the African Economic Outlook Today

The African Development Bank is launching the 2018 edition of its yearly flagship report, the African Economic Outlook (AEO), today January 17, 2018 at its headquarters in Abidjan. As a leading African institution, the Bank is the first to provide headline numbers on Africa’s macroeconomic performance and outlook.

The African Economic Outlook bridges a critical knowledge gap on the diverse socio-economic realities of African economies through regular, rigorous, and comparative analysis.

It provides short-to-medium term forecasts on the evolution of key macroeconomic indicators for all 54 regional member countries, as well as analysis on the state of socio-economic challenges and progress made in each country.

It presents the African Development Bank staff economists’ analyses of African economic development during the previous year and near term. It has become the main flagship report for the African Development Bank, as well as reference material for those interested in Africa’s development, including researchers, investors, civil society organizations, and development partners.

The January release will provide a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the state of African economy, country profiles with key recent developments and prospects for each country, while a set of Regional Economic Outlooks for Africa’s five sub regions will be soon. These self-contained, independent reports, will focus on priority areas of concern for each sub region and provide analysis of the economic and social landscape.

In addition to the main AEO report, there will be issues of pressing current interest. Also for the first time this year, the Bank’s country economists will prepare shorter Regional Economic reports to be released in late January. As before, a full set of updated growth projections will be released in May for the Annual Meetings.

Given a rapidly changing Africa and international economic order, the Bank has revamped the report to enhance its policy relevance while ensuring that it serves the Bank’s operations well. A few changes are evident.

To facilitate advocacy and policy dialogue, the 2018 AEO has been shortened to a maximum of four chapters and about 180 pages, plus the 54 Country Notes, down from more than 300 pages.