Saifaddin Galal
Research Expert North Africa
Inflation in Africa - Statistics & Facts
Inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa was set to reach 12.2 percent in 2022, after increasing steadily from 2020 onwards. The rate is estimated to decrease although it will remain high in the coming years. In North Africa, prices also increased constantly from 2020 to peak in 2022. Soaring consumer prices is a current global trend, impacting advanced as well as emerging and developing economies. Although inflationary pressures have varying causes, few drivers have pushed prices up simultaneously in different countries. For instance, economies worldwide, including those in Africa, still deal with supply disruptions caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. On top of that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to spiraling commodities prices.
Discrepancies among African nations
In Africa, inflation differs widely among countries, with some nations undergoing greater price pressures than others. As of 2022, Sudan was estimated to have the highest inflation rate on the continent, roughly 245 percent. A long-running economic crisis and political instability are at the roots of the country’s inflationary burden. By the end of 2021, the already fragile Sudanese economy felt another hit when military forces took control of the government. After Sudan, Zimbabwe presented the second-highest inflation in Africa, averaging 90 percent. Compared to previous years, however, the rate shrank. With a long history of highly volatile prices, the country saw its inflation rate surpass 500 percent in 2020. Apart from these outliers, at least 10 African countries might experience double-digit inflation in 2022, while the rate will vary between 2.5 percent and 9.5 percent in the continent’s other nations.Before it was COVID-19, then came the war
African consumers have been feeling the impact of increasing prices mostly on food items. As of November 2021, food inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa stood at 11.7 percent. By comparison, the rate was measured at 6.9 percent in November 2019. Harvest issues, mainly due to extreme weather, impacted the food supply chain in the continent. That, associated with trade restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak, has pushed food prices up. As of 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war emerged as another peril. The countries are major wheat suppliers to Africa. In 2022, the reliance on Russian and Ukrainian wheat imports varied among African nations but remained above 30 percent in most of them. The dependency was far higher in some countries: Benin imported all its wheat from Russia, while imports to Somalia originated almost solely from Russia and Ukraine.Higher exposure to poverty and food insecurity
As inflation soars, Africa faces the risk of aggravating poverty rates. In 2022, around 460 million Africans lived with less than 1.90 U.S. dollars a day, more than in previous years. 2020 and 2021 had already recorded a surge in the number of extreme poor people on the continent, due to the impact of COVID-19 on economies and employment levels. This scenario also endangered food security. Africa presents the highest share of people living under severe food insecurity in the world. As of 2020, around one-quarter of the continent’s population lacked enough money to buy food items, a share that has annually increased since 2014.
