Photo by: Duane Daws
South Africa is once again the African continent’s top economy, beating close competitor Nigeria.
“For the past two years, Nigeria has claimed the top spot, but a re-calculation using current exchange rates has placed South Africa back on top,” reported the BBC.
The new calculations are based on the International Monetary Fund’s gross domestic product numbers for the two countries in 2015.
“Over the course of this year so far, South Africa’s rand and Nigeria’s naira have been moving in opposite directions against the dollar – for the rand a gain of around 16 percent, while the naira has lost a third of its value since effectively abandoning its peg to the US greenback,” reported the BBC.
But there’s not much in it – at $301-billion South Africa beats Nigeria by just $5-billion.
Both economies are at risk of falling into recession, as they both contracted in the first quarter of this year.