As much as half of the 18 sub-Saharan Africa countries surveyed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will see their economies contract in 2020, with two of the continent’s economic heavyweights leading the decline.
South Africa, with the largest economy after Nigeria, is forecast to record the biggest economic contraction at 5.8 percent while Nigeria is tipped to contract as much as 3.4 percent.
South Africa entered a recession in the final quarter of 2019 as incessant power outages by state utility, Eskom, took a toll on the economy, while public finances were strained by bailouts to struggling state firms. The coronavirus-indiced global economic meltdown is bound to put Africa’s most industrialised economy in worse shape.
South Africa has reported the most cases of the virus in Africa, with 2,415 cases, that’s 14 percent of the total 17,008 cases on the continent.
However, it has one of the lowest death per reported case ratio, with only 27 deaths, that’s a meagre 3 percent of the 877 African deaths in total. 410 people have recovered from the virus in South Africa.
To curb the spread of the Coronavirus, the country imposed some of the toughest restrictions on the continent to contain the coronavirus, including a five-week lockdown to the end of April.
With production and spending curtailed, the economic outlook was for South Africa was always going to be grim.
Nigeria on the other hand is also expected to he hard hit by the pandemic. President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday extended the lockdown in major cities, Lagos, Abuja and Ogun states by a further 14 days after an initial 14 day lockdown.
Nigeria, which ranks 12th in Africa in terms of confirmed cases of the virus, had reported 373 cases as at the time of writing and recorded 11 deaths and 99 recoveries.
While Nigeria’s cases appear quite mild compared to South Africa, the country’s low testing rate has been fingered as a probable reason for the low numbers. While South Africa has carried out 87,000 tests, Nigeria had done 5,000, 17 times less than South Africa.
Nigeria’s tests per 1 million population of 24 is also well dwarfed by South Africa’s 1,467, an indication Nigeria is not doing enough tests.