The slowdown in China and the associated ending of the commodity super cycle is having a major influence on the immediate growth prospects for Africa, with the former African Development Bank chief economist forecasting that growth rates will come under pressure this year and next.

Professor Mthuli Ncube, who is now a public policy professor at the University of Oxford, in the UK, is forecasting African growth of 4.5% this year and says that the region’s economy is unlikely to expand by more than 5% in 2016.

The figure is more or less in line with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) most recent update of 4.4% for 2015 and 5.1% next year. However, it is a material pullback from rates of well above 5% over the past number of years.

The IMF has also warned of increased risks to emerging markets, including lower growth in China, which could either take the form of a moderate slowdown, or a “harder landing”, which would “produce sizeable spillovers, slowing global trade and putting additional downward pressure on commodity prices”.

Ncube tells Engineering News Online that the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy is already reverberating across the continent and is having a particularly acute effect on oil exporting countries, such as Angola and Nigeria, which he expects to grow by 4.5% and 4.8% respectively.

He also expects the impact to be felt in slow-growing South Africa, which “continues to disappoint”. The South African economy shrank by 1.3% during the second quarter and few are expecting the economy to grow by the 2% level forecast at the start of the year.

China’s slowdown is transmitted to African economies through various channels, including lower commodity prices and declines in trade and foreign direct investment levels.

While Africa’s growth remains more sensitive, overall, to the performance of Europe, which is also under pressure, Ncube estimates that for every percentage point decline in Chinese growth, Africa’s growth weakened by 0.35 of a percentage point.

He, therefore, describes the Chinese economic performance as the most important risk factor facing the continent at present.

African governments, Ncube argues, will need to focus more closely on improving macroeconomic management, implementing cross-border infrastructure programmes and raising intraregional trade to mitigate the effect of the slowdown.

Intraregional trade in Africa currently stands at around 15% of total trade, despite intraregional trade in East Africa having grown to 25%. It is well below levels of other regions globally, though, with intraregional trade accounting for about 50% of all trade in Asia.

Overall, Ncube believes Africa’s growth will remain resilient, despite the downturn and the end of the super cycle. But he warns that oil and mineral exporters are likely to perform poorly when compared with non-oil exporting countries.

Oil exporters such as Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, and Republic of Congo, will experience a drop in economic growth, but Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania should be strong performers during 2015.