Macroeconomic and social developments in Eastern Africa 2021: from pandemic to a sustained recovery

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented economic and social disruption globally. In Eastern Africa, the pandemic continues to threaten the region’s recent economic and social progress, registering its first economic recession since 1992. GDP is growth estimated to have contracted by 0.7 percent in 2020, after expanding by an impressive 6.5 percent in 2019. Although the region’s economic recovery looked assured in the early months of 2021, with growth projected of 3.1 percent (UNDESA, 2021), the prospects are currently subdued due to new waves of the pandemic.The effects of the pandemic on growth in Eastern Africa have not been uniformly distributed. While the whole region has been adversely affected by this crisis, the impact has been more severe for countries more heavily dependent on certain services sub-sectors where greater human contact is required, such as tourism, hotels, restaurants, education, etc. Subdued economic activity in the region due to the Covid-19 crisis has led to a corresponding reduction in fiscal revenues, amplifying pre-existing debt vulnerabilities in the region. Even before the crisis, there were six out of fourteen countries with debt-to-GDP ratios exceeding 50 percent in 2019. Despite the severity of the economic crisis, with the lifting of containment measures, a modest recovery in economic activity became evident in the second half of 2020 and first quarter of 2021, pointing to the relative resilience of the sub-region. This is particularly notable in the area of merchandise trade which, after experiencing a sharp drop in the initial period of the pandemic, registered a robust recovery. A few sectors in the region have actually benefited from the crisis notably ICT.