Ghana ranked among eight African countries with the highest GDP
Ghana has been ranked among eight countries with the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on the African Continent.
The ranking by Statista, a German company specializing in market and consumer data, analysed the GDP performance of African countries over the last 30 years – 1990 to 2020.
Ghana, with a total GDP value of $72.4 billion at end-2020 was ranked the African country with the eighth highest GDP on the continent.
Unlike its peers – Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Angola and Tunisia – Ghana made the list only in 2020.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Ghana was worth 72.35 billion US dollars in 2020, according to official data from the World Bank. The GDP value of Ghana represents 0.06 percent of the world economy.
The gross domestic product (GDP) measures of national income and output for a given country’s economy. The gross domestic product (GDP) is equal to the total expenditures for all final goods and services produced within the country in a stipulated period of time.
Ghana’s GDP trend from 1990 to 2020
Per the ranking, South Africa had the biggest GDP in 1990, but however lost the enviable position to Nigeria in 2020.
South Africa in the recent ranking places third with a GDP value of $301.9 billion behind Egypt with a GDP value of $3631 billion.
With a total GDP of $432.3 billion, Nigeria has become the biggest economy on the African continent.
Nigeria’s first place is largely attributable to its rapidly expanding financial sector, which grew from one percent of the total GDP in 2001 to ten percent in 2018, and its role as one of the world leaders in petroleum exports.
The growing tech hub of Lagos, the second-largest metropolitan area in Africa and among the largest in the world, is also likely to further bolster Nigeria’s growth in the coming years, even though the divide between the part of the population living in slums without access to basic sanitation and its upper class making the city one of the most expensive in the world is likely to grow as well.
This is also reflected in its comparably low GDP per capita of $2,100.