Assessment of socio-economic conditions in the Eastern Africa subregion

Abstract

The overall trend in economic performance of the countries in the Eastern Africa subregion indicates some degree of recovery as reflected in Fig. 1 and Annex II on the group of countries' Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 1997, the group of countries recorded an estimated average GDP growth rate of 3.9% at 1990 prices, which positively compares with the growth rate of 3.0% in 1996 and 2.8% in 1995. However, the group's GDP performance in 1996 was lower than (4.25%) that of Africa and that (5.5%) of developing countries. The relative growth improvement was attributed mainly to improvements in security conditions in some of the countries, the total end of war in others, good weather conditions in a few of the countries, and economic reform efforts that have continued in most of the countries of the subregion.