Posts falsely claim Ethiopia overtook Nigeria to become Africa’s fourth-largest economy

Published on January 15, 2025 at 17:57
2 min read
By Oluseyi AWOJULUGBE, AFP Nigeria

Nigeria’s economy has struggled in recent years due to lower oil prices and tough economic reforms, resulting in a severe cost-of-living crisis. Posts circulating on social media claim this has caused Ethiopia to replace Nigeria as Africa’s fourth-largest economy. This is false: the International Monetary Fund ranked Ethiopia’s economy sixth and Nigeria’s fourth in Africa at the end of 2024.

“Ethiopia has just displaced Nigeria to become the 4th largest economy in Africa as Nigeria now ranks 5th,” reads the post, which has been shared almost 3,000 times since it was published on January 5, 2024.

Screenshot of the false X post, taken on January 13, 2025

It also features an alleged quote attributed to someone named Okenyi Kenechi reading: “From number one to 5 in just 10 years. The error of 2015 will take decades to correct.”

In 2015, the Peoples Democratic Party lost the election to the All Progressives Congress, which is still in power (archived here).

The claim also appeared on other social media platforms including here and here on Facebook and on X.

Africa’s top economies

Gross domestic product (GDP) is an indicator of an economy's size. It measures the value of goods and services produced in a country over a certain period (archived here).

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), a global financial institution with 191 member countries, tracks and publishes economic data including GDP.

South Africa, Egypt and Algeria were ranked as the top three economies in Africa, according to the IMF's 2024 GDP estimates (archived here).

Chart showing the GDP of Africa’s biggest economies in 2024. Source: International Monetary Fund.

Nigeria’s economy placed fourth with a GDP of $199.72 billion, followed by Morocco and Ethiopia.

Previously first

Nigeria was Africa’s biggest economic powerhouse between 2012 and 2016, based on IMF data.

It dropped to second place in 2017 but returned to pole position the following year and maintained this spot until 2022.

Egypt overtook Nigeria to become Africa’s largest economy in 2023.

Chart showing GDP data of Africa’s current top three economies. Source: International Monetary Fund

This data negates the second part of the claim, which states that Nigeria went from being Africa’s largest economy to the fifth largest in 10 years.

Instead, IMF data shows that Nigeria went from being the largest economy to the fourth largest in 10 years.

You can find all of AFP Fact Check’s debunks on claims from Africa here.

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