IFC: Egypt to Lead African Countries in Digital Economy by 2025

In a report, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) expected that Egypt would lead African countries in the digital economy alongside Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya by 2025, as the five countries have no less than 700,000 professional digital developers.

The Foundation expects the size of the digital economy in Africa to grow to more than $180 billion by 2025, equivalent to 5.2% of Africa's total GDP, according to Middle East News Agency.

The IFC based its estimates of the African digital economy on data on the overall growth of African GDP during the period from 2010 to 2019, which was at a rate of 4% annually, a rate that exceeded the growth rates of the European Union during the same period (1.7%) and Latin America (1.7%). .

It believes that the level of the current spread of Internet services in Africa reaches 40% of the total African population throughout the countries of the continent, and that the growth rates of mobile phone sales in the hands of Africans grow by 2.5% annually, which is a rate that says the global average (2%), and that according to According to these indicators, the digital economy can contribute by no less than 2.5% to the growth of the African citizen’s share of the continent’s total domestic product by 2025, if Internet penetration and penetration rates rise by 75%.

The International Finance Corporation expects that by 2050 the digital economy will create 44 million job opportunities in Africa and contribute no less than $712 billion to the total GDP of the countries of the continent, and said that until 2019 the most important obstacle for business developers and new projects in Africa was Digital services, which constituted 82 percent of the responses of a sample of new investors, whose opinions were surveyed by the research unit at the International Finance Corporation at the time.

IFC believes that the past five years witnessed the injection of funds amounting to $ 2.02 billion in the digital economy sectors in Africa, of which $ 493.5 million was pumped in the first half of the year 2020.