COVID-19’ll Cost Nigeria, Others $236.7bn GDP – AfDB

The outbreak of coronavirus in Africa could cost Nigeria, Togo and other countries on the continent $236.7bn in their cumulative Gross Domestic Product, the African Development Bank said on Tuesday.

It said this in its report on African Economic Outlook (Supplement).

The bank projected that if the COVID-19 pandemic and its harsh impacts persist on the continent beyond the first half of this year, there would be deeper contraction of the continent’s GDP.

It estimated the Real GDP of Africa to contract by 1.7 per cent this year.

This represents a 5.6 percentage points drop from the January 2020 pre-COVID–19 projection if the virus has a substantial impact but of short duration.

The AfDB, however, explained that a prolonged situation into the second half of this year caused by the pandemic would result in deeper GDP contraction.

It projected a deeper contraction of about 3.4 per cent, down by 7.3 percentage points from the growth projected before the outbreak of COVID–19.

It said the cumulative GDP loss for the continent could range between $173.1bn and $236.7bn in 2020–2021.