The International Monetary Fund says Nigeria and other West African countries will lose a combined sum of $40bn in their Gross Domestic Products if governments fail to curtail the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease on time.
According to IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook released on Tuesday, sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth remains strong and should accelerate to 5.8 per cent in 2015 but if the Ebola outbreak in its western corner is protracted or spreads it will have “dramatic consequences” for the zone.
The Fund said Africa should repeat 2013’s growth rate of 5.1 per cent this year and then accelerate in 2015 as infrastructure investments boost efficiency and the service sectors and agriculture flourish.
The 2015 forecast was an improvement on the 5.5 per cent growth for the overall region projected by the IMF in April.
“This overall positive outlook is, however, overshadowed by the dire situation in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where the current Ebola outbreak is exacting a heavy human and economic toll,” the report’s Sub-Saharan Africa section said.
“Should the Ebola outbreak become more protracted or spread to more countries, it would have dramatic consequences for economic activity in the west African region,” the IMF added.
In a separate report, the World Bank said that without a scaled-up response, transportation, cross-border trade, supply chains and tourism in West Africa could be “severely disrupted”, costing the region as a whole tens of billions of dollars.
“With our estimates of the impact of West Africa alone, even in a less tragic case, the lost GDP is likely to run into the billions,” David Evans, Senior Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Division, said.
“And in a worse case, we have even higher numbers (more than $40bn),” he told the Reuters Global Markets Forum.
The security situation in several parts of Sub-Saharan Africa remained fragile, the IMF said, noting rumbling internal conflicts in South Sudan and Central African Republic.
Growth in South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy, had been lacklustre, hit by protracted strikes, low business confidence and tight electricity supply, the IMF said.
But it saw “muted recovery” taking hold in 2015 through improving labor relations and gradually stronger exports that would push South African growth to 2.3 per cent from a forecast 1.4 per cent this year.
By contrast, Nigeria – the continent’s top oil producer which overtook South Africa as its biggest economy this year after a dramatic GDP rebasing – is forecast to expand seven per cent this year and 7.3 per cent in 2015, the Fund said.
Some African economies had been able to increasingly tap capital markets, with recent sovereign bond issuances in the Eurodollar market largely oversubscribed, the report said, citing maiden issues by Kenya and Ivory Coast.
African currencies had also generally stabilized after weakening in 2013, with some exceptions.
The IMF report singled out Ghana’s cedi, whose continued downward pressure reflected “domestic policy slippages”, and Zambia’s kwacha, which fell heavily in the first half of the year before recovering some lost ground.

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