The World Bank announced on Monday that it will include North Africa for the first time in the continent’s regional integration strategy, focusing on regional connectivity for the duration of the plan, until 2023.
“The update of the Regional Integration Strategy and Cooperative Assistance report between 2021 and 2023 will support increased connectivity in the areas of transport, energy and digital infrastructure and will also promote greater trade and trade integration through trade facilitation in regional economic corridors, technical assistance for free trade agreement implementation, support for regional value chains and financial market integration,” reads the statement sent to Lusa.
In the new approach, the World Bank Group says it is “increasing its reach by including North African countries in the regional integration agenda for the first time to help strengthen dialogue on the continental integration policy agenda and to engage the private sector in North Africa to gauge opportunities to increase their investments in other parts of the continent.”
For the World Bank Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa, this update of the bank’s approach “reflects and builds on the strong historical and socioeconomic linkages that exist between the Maghreb countries and the rest of Africa.”
According to Ferid Belhaj, the Sahara desert is not a dividing line,” so through “policy dialogue, technical and financial assistance, and mobilization of cross-border investments, the bank will continue to support continental integration, from Tunis to Cape Town, from Marrakech to Mogadishu.”
The World Bank’s new approach comes at the same time that this multilateral financial entity updated its forecasts for the continent, maintaining the growth forecast in sub-Saharan Africa at 2.8% this year, but cutting 0.2 points to the estimate for 2022, when these economies should expand by 3.3% of GDP.
Angola is expected to grow 0.5% this year, 0.4 points below the previous forecast of 0.9%, and accelerate to 3.3% next year.
Cape Verde, meanwhile, is expected to grow 3.9%, which is 1.6 points below the previous estimate.
Guinea-Bissau’s economy will expand by 3%, the same forecast as before, while Equatorial Guinea saw its forecast improved by 5.2 percentage points, now anticipating growth of 2.4%.
Sao Tome and Principe, with growth of 2.7%, or 0.3 points below the January forecast, and Mozambique, which should see GDP grow by 1.7% (1.1 points below the previous estimate) complete the forecasts for the region’s Portuguese-speaking economies, according to the report, which improved the forecast for global growth by 1.5 points, to 5.6%.