Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow at about 4.4% this year, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing economic regions.

This is according to the latest Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It tells a story that runs counter to the prevailing pessimism about the continent, forecasting regional growth of 4.4% in 2026, after growing at 4.1% in 2025. That pace makes sub-Saharan Africa one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. 

Several African economies are expanding at rates that rival the strongest global performers. Tanzania is forecast to grow by 6.3% in 2026. Zambia is expected to expand by 6.4%. Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Uganda, and Ethiopia all continue to post growth above 5%. 

Against this backdrop, South Africa stands out as a clear outlier. 

The IMF expects South Africa’s economy to grow by just 1.2% in 2026. Only Lesotho, at 1.1%, is projected to perform worse in the region. And Lesotho’s economy is deeply intertwined with that of South Africa’s, and it should rather be considered as a minor South African province, in economic terms, rather than as a separate country. 

Because South Africa is one of the region’s largest economies, its weakness drags down the headline numbers.

Stripping out South Africa gives sub-Saharan Africa a projected economic growth rate of about 5.5% for 2026, making it the fastest-growing region in the world, faster than the developing countries of Asia, which together are forecast to grow at about 4.7% in 2026. This is also significantly faster than the global growth rate of 3.1% and four times faster than the G7 economies, which in aggregate are projected to grow at 1.6% this year. 

A sustained annual economic growth rate of about 5% means that an economy’s size will double about every 13 or 14 years. If sub-Saharan Africa – as a region – maintains these growth rates the region will be unrecognisable within a generation. The creation of real economic opportunities will also allow Africans to escape from poverty, which is increasingly a uniquely African problem (about two-thirds of the world’s poor now live in sub-Saharan Africa). 

Sub-Saharan Africa is starting to benefit from improved governance in many of the region’s countries. Of course, many of the problems that have dogged countries in sub-Saharan Africa still exist, such as weak governments and civil conflicts, but there are a number of countries where these are no longer the primary problems. 

South Africa could benefit from being close to a rapidly growing and large consumer market, on its doorstep, but it must get the policy mix right.

One of the ways countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand saw rapid economic growth was because they took advantage of being close to a large market that was developing rapidly – China.

Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand did not translate proximity to China into sustained growth through geography alone, however, but through policy discipline. These economies built export-oriented manufacturing bases, kept trade regimes predictable, protected investment, and maintained regulatory systems that rewarded scale, efficiency, and integration into global value chains. Proximity created opportunity, but credibility converted it into capital, factories, and jobs. Firms invested because they could plan across decades, move goods without friction, and rely on rules that did not shift with political fashion. Growth followed as a consequence of that certainty.

South Africa sits beside a rapidly expanding consumer market of its own, yet it has not made the same policy choices. Instead of positioning itself as the manufacturing and logistics hub for a growing continent, it has allowed regulatory complexity, infrastructure decay, and policy volatility to blunt its geographic advantage.

In addition, South Africa runs a vast trade surplus with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa and most of the goods it sends to those countries are finished products, rather than the raw materials that make up much of what South Africa exports to the rest of the world. South Africa’s own development could thus benefit greatly from an African economic growth explosion, but the country must have the policies and infrastructure in place to take advantage of this.

Amongst the polices South Africa must rethink and abandon are black economic empowerment (BEE), expropriation without compensation (EWC), and the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme. BEE acts as a major tax on investment while EWC only serves to push any potential investors away from the country in the first place. NHI will also result in an exodus of South Africa’s skilled middle class, which will only hamper the country’s development.

The lesson from Asia is not that growth arrives automatically when neighbours prosper. It is that countries must actively shape themselves to absorb that growth. Without export discipline, investment certainty, and a clear commitment to competitiveness, South Africa risks watching Africa’s expansion pass it by rather than pull it forward.