Africa GDP ranking

Kenya has climbed up the wealth rankings to become Africa’s ninth-largest economy following a review of national output figures that also saw the country join the world’s league of middle-income nations.

But the latest update of national accounts, technically known as rebasing, has put the GDP figure for 2013 at Sh4.75 trillion ($53.2 billion), some 25 per cent higher than the earlier estimate of Sh3.8 trillion.

This has helped Kenya go up four places on comparative GDP tables to overtake countries such as Ethiopia, Tunisia and Ghana and claim position nine from the previous rank of 12th in Africa. The country also jumped about ten spots globally from position 87, overtaking nations such as Guatemala, Bulgaria, Costa Rica and Lebanon.

Nigeria, which also rebased its GDP in April, overtook South Africa to be the continent’s largest economy, while Egypt is placed third. Algeria is ranked fourth followed by oil-rich Angola, Morocco, Libya and Sudan.

The new rankings, incorporating Kenya’s revised figures, place Tanzania’s economy at position 13 in size, Uganda (18th), Rwanda (34th) and Burundi as having the region’s tiniest GDP ranked at number 43 in Africa.