An Action Agenda for Africa’s Competitiveness

The document outlines a strategic framework to enhance Africa's competitiveness, emphasizing public-private dialogue and regional integration. It identifies systemic weaknesses in infrastructure, human capital, and governance, while providing specific regional analyses for the East African Community, ECOWAS, North Africa, and SADC.

• Despite rapid growth over the last 15 years, Africa's overall competitiveness and productivity remain low, leaving the region vulnerable to global economic shifts such as falling commodity prices and a strong US dollar.
• African economies exhibit high heterogeneity in competitiveness; while Mauritius (46th), South Africa (49th), and Rwanda (58th) are top performers, African nations comprise 16 of the bottom 20 economies in the Global Competitiveness Index 2015-2016, with Guinea ranking last at 140th.
• The region significantly trails the ASEAN-5 in critical competitiveness pillars, specifically in infrastructure, human capital (health, primary, and higher education), technological readiness, business sophistication, and innovation.
• The proposed Action Agenda identifies eight priority areas for improvement: strengthening institutions and governance, developing a common regional infrastructure strategy, improving labour market efficiency and skills, facilitating the movement of goods and people, supporting SMEs, integrating financial markets, promoting regional and global value chains, and increasing agricultural productivity.
• Regional analysis reveals specific bottlenecks: the East African Community struggles with ICT infrastructure and access to finance; Francophone West Africa faces deindustrialization and poor infrastructure; North Africa is hindered by large public sectors and inefficient bureaucracy; and the SADC region is challenged by restrictive labour regulations and a disconnect between regional planning and national implementation.

APA

World Economic Forum (2016). An Action Agenda for Africa’s Competitiveness. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Africa_Competitiveness_2016.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. An Action Agenda for Africa’s Competitiveness. 2016. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Africa_Competitiveness_2016.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=An Action Agenda for Africa’s Competitiveness |date=2016 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Africa_Competitiveness_2016.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2016action, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{An Action Agenda for Africa’s Competitiveness}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2016}, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Africa_Competitiveness_2016.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }