The International Monetary Fund has said that Nigeria’s macroeconomic stabilisation efforts are beginning to yield results, contributing to an improved growth outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Fund made the assessment on Wednesday during a press conference to present its January 2026 World Economic Outlook Update, in which it revised growth projections for the African region upward, citing Nigeria among key economies where policy adjustments are paying off.
According to the IMF, growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is now projected at 4.4 per cent in 2025, representing a 0.2 percentage-point upgrade from its previous forecast, while growth for 2026 and 2027 has been revised upward to 4.6 per cent, a cumulative increase of 0.3 percentage points compared with the October projections.
Explaining the revision, the IMF’s Division Chief in the Research Department, Deniz Igan, said the stronger outlook reflected a combination of favourable commodity prices and improving macroeconomic conditions in some large economies, including Nigeria.
“Another reason is the macroeconomic stabilisation efforts that started paying off in some key economies like Ethiopia and Nigeria,” Igan said.
She added that higher prices for commodities such as gold, copper and coffee had also supported growth across the region.
Igan noted that Nigeria’s stabilisation gains were helping to create a more predictable and stable macroeconomic environment, alongside structural reforms in South Africa and improved global financial conditions, which have lowered external borrowing costs for African economies.
The IMF said the regional outlook also benefited from easing global financial conditions relative to late 2025, which have improved access to capital and supported economic activity, even as risks remain elevated.
Igan cautioned that downside risks persist, particularly for low-income and fragile economies, citing the prospect of cuts to international development assistance and a tightening of global financial conditions.
The IMF’s Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said global growth remained resilient despite trade disruptions and heightened uncertainty, with the Fund revising global growth upward to 3.3 per cent, 0.2 percentage points higher than its October estimate.
He said inflation was expected to continue easing globally, declining from 4.1 per cent in 2025 to 3.8 per cent in 2026 and 3.4 per cent in 2027, although it would remain above central bank targets in many emerging and developing economies.
The World Economic Outlook Update, released in Brussels, is one of two interim updates published annually by the IMF, with full editions issued during the Spring and Annual Meetings.
The Fund said that while Nigeria and other African economies were benefiting from stabilisation efforts and supportive global conditions, sustaining growth would require continued policy discipline and resilience against external shocks.
The IMF projected that Nigeria’s economy will grow by 4.4 per cent in 2026, based on improving macroeconomic conditions.
The projection, which represents an improvement from 4.2 per cent in 2025, was contained in the IMF’s January 2026 World Economic Outlook titled “Global Economy: Steady amid Divergent Forces.”
The PUNCH reports that the IMF’s latest projection comes on the back of a warning from the body about reform fatigue, urging the Federal Government to sustain ongoing economic reforms and avoid policy reversals, particularly as political pressures build ahead of the election cycle.
The IMF’s Country Representative for Nigeria, Dr Christian Ebeke, during a panel discussion at the 2026 Macroeconomic Outlook event of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group in Lagos, warned Nigeria against reversing recent economic reforms, noting that such a move would erode hard-won macroeconomic gains.
