The African Financial Review July-August 2014 | Page 24

Table 1. Africa growth of demand for exports and imports of goods and non factor services.
Country

EGS

EGS

IGS

IGS

2000-2006
(Average)%

2007-2008
(Average)%

2000-2006
(Average)%

2007-2008
(Average)%

5.2
4.0
6.0
12.1
3.5

-6.3
10.3
7.6
23.3
1.0

7.8
9.0
7.9
7.6
5.4

7.7
11.0
4.9
28.5
10.2

Nigeria
South Africa
Kenya
Egypt
Ghana

Legend: EGS = Exports of Goods and Non-Factor Services. IGS = Imports of Goods and Non-Factor Services. Source: IMF Quarterly Reports, 2009.

Table 2. Africa real GDP growth rates (frequency distribution).
1990-’99
Negative

2000-’05

2006

2007-2008

5

4

2

3

0-3%

24

13

11

10

Above 5%

7

14

32

25

53

53

Above 3 to 5%
Not available
Total

15
2

53

21
1

7
1

14
1

53

Source: IMF Quarterly Report, 2009.

global economic growth. Given the inter-linkages in the global
economy, policy makers also foresee the global slowdown will
invariably reduce the demand for African exports. This has already
been reflected in the demand for and prices of commodities in
African countries. For South Africa and Egypt, there was an
appreciable increase in the demand for exports and non-factor
services between year 2000 and 2008 while the story was different
for Nigeria and Ghana.

However; there was a general increase in the demand for
imports and non-factor services by South Africa, Egypt and
Ghana within the same periods (Table 1).

In his paper titled:’ What the Global Financial Crisis
Means for Sub –Saharan Africa,’ Takatoshi (2009) rightly
observed that the world’s growth was expected to come to a
virtual halt, which would require a decisive global policy response.
Quite unfortunately, despite wide- ranging policy actions by
governments and Central Banks around the world, financial
strains remained acute, pulling down the real economy. Given

Major emerging economies such as China,
India and Brazil are now expected to
experience much lower growth than in recent
years. This has been dragged down by falling
export demand, subdued capital inflows and
generally lower commodity prices.

strong policies to stimulate the recovery, it is expected that world’s
economy will again experience growth in 2014. IMF (2009) noted
that even in the second half of the year, many advanced economies
are still experiencing their deepest recession since World War 11
(Tella, 2009; World Bank, 2009).

24 | The African Financial Review

Major emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil are
now expected to experience much lower growth than in recent
years. This has been dragged down by falling export demand,
subdued capital inflows and generally lower commodity prices.
Again, unemployment rates, rates of inflation and banks, lending
rates have been heightened.

It should be added that the major economic indicators which
manifested positive development in the industrialized economies
are now redressed at all-time low levels. These indicators include
the gross domestic product, GDP, buoyant foreign reserves, high
employment opportunities among the active working population
and low rate of inflation on consumable goods and services.
Others include high level of exports and moderate interest rates,
and so on. For instance, between 1990 and 1999, only 39 out of
53 African countries had real GDP growth rate of 5 % and below
while just 25 of these countries had above 5 % between 2007 and
first quarter of 2009 (Table 2).

Materials and methods

Purely secondary data were used for this study. These data were
obtained from various World Bank and IMF reports/bulletins (all
published), Statement of Accounts of the Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN), textbooks, published journal articles and so on. Data used
for the study covered some 18 years that is1990-2008. Information
was collected on national GDP levels, rate of inflation, interest
rates, growth rate of the economy, employment rates, money
supply levels, import and export levels, among others. Descriptive
statistics such as mean, median, mode, frequency tables and other
measures of central tendencies were used to analyse the data.

Results

According to the IMF (2009), Africa’s aggregate GDP at current