African leaders advocate for new approaches to measuring green wealth on the continent, emphasizing that current gross domestic product measures in most African countries are outdated and underestimated true wealth.
They spoke on the World Bank Group’s Spring 2025 conference and bystanders at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at an event hosted by the African Development Bank Group on the African Union Commission and the African Union Mission on Thursday.
“We need to speak and speak. It’s time to turn our commitments and pledges into concrete actions,” said Ambassador Hilda Suda Mafetze, permanent representative of the African Union’s mission, “We need to invest in a system of national accounts.
The event featured discussions in the 2024 African Development Bank Group Report. This found that, including the value of carbon sequestered in African forests, expanded an additional $66.1 billion GDP on the continent in 2022, resulting in an expansion of about 2.2%. Professor Kevin Urama, Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank, and his Vice President, published key findings from the report, measuring natural capital and economic productivity in Africa.
The leaders emphasized that a proper assessment of Africa’s natural resources will change the continent’s financial landscape by unlocking access to global financial flows, improving national risk profiles, and creating new investment capabilities in green economies and climate-resistant infrastructures.
This call for action is better reflecting the contributions of Africa’s green wealth and sustainability, as African leaders are expected to call for reforms to the global economic and financial infrastructure ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil.
“It’s time for us to redefine our identity as Africa,” said Nigerian Prime Minister Ali Ramin Zayn during a panel discussion on practical steps towards implementing Africa’s 2025 National Account (SNAS). “Africa is underestimated. We have to work strategically to change this.”
Panelists noted that some African countries still use SNAs dating back to 1968. SNA is an international standard system of domestic account concepts and methods adopted in most countries around the world.
Madagascar’s Minister of Economic and Finance, Lindra Rabarinilinarison called for more robust technology transfer and technical capacity building to enable African countries to build appropriate statistical systems for natural capital. She outlined that Madagascar has launched a pilot project to utilize and measure the value of its natural resources.
“Madagascar is a rich country, but not rich,” she lamented, referring to the country’s abundant natural resources.
Erichstrasner, IMF’s Statistics division, described the report as transformative, ensuring that the fund is ready to work with the African Development Bank, the World Bank and the government to implement its recommendations. He emphasized the need to focus on national priorities. “So we can put together a plan to quickly guide countries into a new system of national capital valuation,” he emphasized.
Citing numbers from the African Development Bank, Ambassador Suda Mahze observed that if the country rebates GDP based on carbon sequestration in forests alone, the impact was substantial, with a greater GDP increase of 38.2% in Cote devoir, 36.7% in Benin and 33.5% in Niger. “We need to ensure a proper assessment of Africa’s green wealth. Knowing the value of this critical asset base and incorporating that true value into our domestic account will improve the risk profile of the economy and enhance access to financial flows for development financing,” the ambassador said.
In his presentation, Vice President Urama pointed out the massive economic value of Africa’s natural resources, estimated at $6.2 trillion in 2018, and the fact that the continent accounts for 26% of the world’s forest-based carbon capture, despite the fact that it only contributes 4% of the world’s carbon emissions.
“Africa’s green wealth and the important global public goods and ecosystem services we provide to the world are often overlooked in economic assessments,” Urama said. “This significantly underestimates the gross domestic product of African countries despite its abundant green wealth.”
He said that in addition to natural capital, ecosystem services and informal economic activity are not considered in GDP. Reevaluating these assets through a system of national account renewal, including the Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) and informal sector, could significantly increase Africa’s GDP and improve access to sustainable finance, Urama said.
“This is not just about revising statistics, it’s about ensuring comparability of measurements of GDP in Africa and around the world. By updating the system of national accounts in the country, we can ensure that the basket of goods and services included in the national GDP measure is the same, and we can avoid comparing the Orange with the App.
He called on African countries to allocate appropriate budgets to upgrade their national accounting systems and re-eliminate GDP, noting that “this is a sensible investment that can deliver low-hanging fruit.”
Professor Victor Mlinde, executive director of the African Economic Research Consortium, described the new model developed by the African Development Bank as transformative.
“This is a bold step in addressing the methodological gap in how a country’s GDP is measured to consider the wealth of a country. Its recommendations provide a wealth of material for economists to work on improving the methodology for economists to assess a country’s wealth,” he said.
The African Development Bank has expressed its commitment to working with the World Bank, the IMF and other partners to implement the recommendations in the report. It also takes practical steps, such as creating standard methods for assessing natural resources, linking environmental goals with other policies, training local African experts, and helping African countries sell environmental benefits in carbon markets around the world. Banking Groups also host a community of practice for the African natural capital accounting community
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