According to Stephen Karingi, Director of Macroeconomics, Finance and Governance at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Africa's GDP is projected to grow by 4% in 2026, supported by improved macroeconomic stability, public investment, foreign direct investment and the expansion of regional trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Speaking to CNBC Africa on the sidelines of the ministers' conference, Karingi said UNECA's latest economic report on Africa sees the continent entering 2026 strongly after governments made progress in controlling inflation and stabilizing their economies. But he cautioned that sustaining and accelerating growth beyond current levels will require a shift away from a model driven primarily by labor and capital to one driven by productivity, innovation and better use of data.
“Our report, the Economic Report on Africa for 2026, projects growth of 4.0%, driven by the current macroeconomic stability enjoyed by African countries, the investments they are making in public investment and the attraction of FDI,” Karingi said. Trade and regional integration are also contributing, he said, adding that the AfCFTA is already helping to support export growth across the continent, even if its impact has not yet reached its full potential.
Karingi said one of the more encouraging aspects of the outlook is the reduction in inflation pressures. Inflation, which posed a significant challenge in 2025 and the year before, is now expected to remain below 10% in 2026. UNECA had been expecting inflation to fall further in 2027, although that path is now being reassessed in light of the latest global disruptions.
Those disruptions include renewed geopolitical tensions, including the conflict involving Iran, as well as the continuing effects of the war in Ukraine. Caringi said these shocks are quickly spreading to African economies through higher fertilizer prices and energy costs, raising the risk that food and household price pressures could intensify again.
Nevertheless, Caringi argued that Africa is gradually building resilience to global shocks. In his view, one of the continent's most important buffers is the deep implementation of the AfCFTA. A more integrated continental market, he said, would help Africa strengthen internal supply chains in strategic sectors such as energy and fertilizers, reduce the risk of external instability and control imported inflation.
“I think we need to exploit the African Continental Free Trade Area. I think it's one of our insurance policies,” he said. If production and supply can ramp up to key areas within Africa, he said, food price inflation and other external pressures will become less severe.
At the same time, Karingi said that if rising global costs begin to weigh heavily on household budgets, governments will need to deploy targeted assistance to households. He suggested the policy response would be particularly important if the latest geopolitical shock is prolonged.
Nevertheless, the larger structural message of the UNECA report is not just about dealing with near-term risks, but also about changing Africa's long-term development model. Karingi said much of the continent's expansion is still being generated by increases in labor and capital rather than gains in total factor productivity. This, he said, is the major obstacle preventing Africa from moving from a growth rate of around 3.5% to 4% to a higher trajectory of 5% and above.
According to Karingi, this is where innovation, leading technologies and data become central. The UNECA report argues that increasing technological readiness could significantly increase productivity across the continent. He cited evidence in the report showing that if the Frontier Technology Readiness Index increased by 1%, the total factor productivity of African economies could increase by about 0.3 percentage points. In manufacturing, the gains could be even larger, increasing by as much as 1 percentage point.
The implication is that digital capabilities, advanced technologies and the treatment of data as economic assets are no longer peripheral policy issues. Instead, they are emerging as the main drivers of future competitiveness, industrialization and growth.
Karingi said regional performance on frontier technology adoption remains uneven. North Africa currently leads, followed by Southern Africa, while East Africa, Western Africa and Central Africa lag behind those two sub-regions. Yet he stressed that leading regions still score below 0.5 on the readiness index used in the report, on a scale where 1 is the highest possible score. This shows considerable scope for improvement across the continent.
Even with that difference, Karingi struck an optimistic note, saying African countries are already investing in and adopting leading technologies, even if not at the pace that policymakers would like. The challenge now is to accelerate that momentum and implement the strategies needed to achieve mass adoption.
For Karingi, the main objective of the conference was clear: Africa's next development phase will depend on whether it can unlock productivity gains, especially through technology and data. He said the continent's young population represents a huge opportunity, but the demographic dividend will not be reaped automatically.
“The productivity that can actually come from that demographic is unlikely to happen unless we do the right thing in terms of harnessing data and leading technologies,” he said.
Due to this, governments are left with a double task. In the short term, they must protect economies and households from fresh global shocks. In the medium to long term, they need to invest more aggressively in innovation ecosystems, digital infrastructure, data governance and regional integration. UNECA's message is that Africa has already laid some of the macroeconomic foundations for growth in 2026. The next challenge is to transform that stagnation into a more productive, technology-enabled and flexible growth model.