Africa Overtakes Asia? How a Reordering of Global Growth Connects to Latin America

Rio Times · Analysis

A quiet but historic reordering is underway: in 2026, Africa’s economy is projected to grow faster than Asia’s for the first time, reshaping the geography of global growth and forcing Latin American policymakers and investors to rethink who their real competitors—and partners—are in the scramble for emerging-market capital.

A Seismic Shift in the Global Growth Map

For decades, the story of emerging-market growth has been told with Asia at its centre. China’s industrial miracle, India’s demographic dividend, and Southeast Asia’s manufacturing boom formed the gravitational pull that shaped trade routes, commodity flows, and diplomatic strategy from Brasília to Buenos Aires.

That orthodoxy is being quietly overturned. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the continent’s economy is projected to expand faster than Asia’s in 2026, breaking a pattern that has held for most of the post-Cold War era.

The figure is not a blip. It reflects structural shifts in demographics, urbanisation, and digital adoption that are accelerating just as several Asian giants face headwinds from ageing populations and property-sector hangovers.

For Latin America—a region that has long calibrated its commodity exports, infrastructure financing, and diplomatic hedging toward Asian demand—the implications are immediate and underappreciated.

When the fastest-growing market is no longer across the Pacific but across the South Atlantic, the strategic calculus shifts.

This piece unpacks the data behind Africa’s growth surge, the regional divergences within it, and the concrete opportunities and risks it creates for Latin American economies.

East Africa: The Engine Latin America Cannot Ignore

Eastern Africa is the undisputed powerhouse of the continent’s new growth story. The region has maintained an average GDP growth rate of 5.3% per year between 2014 and 2024, outpacing every other African sub-region.

UNECA projects that in 2026, East Africa will grow by 5.8%, driven primarily by Ethiopia and Kenya—two economies that together offer scale, demographic depth, and complementary growth models.

Kenya, Sub-Saharan Africa’s fourth-largest economy, has averaged 4.7% growth over the past decade, powered by a services sector that now dominates its GDP. Its tech hub, often called ‘Silicon Savannah’, has attracted venture capital that Latin American start-up ecosystems would recognise.

Ethiopia, despite recent internal conflicts, remains a demographic giant with over 120 million people and a manufacturing ambition that echoes Vietnam’s trajectory two decades ago.

Andrew Mold, Director of UNECA in Eastern Africa, has warned that strong headline growth is accompanied by widening disparities and increasing dependence on mineral exports—risks that sound familiar to anyone watching Chile’s copper dependency or Argentina’s commodity cycles.

For Latin America, East Africa’s growth is not an abstraction. It represents a consumer market of nearly 500 million people that is integrating through the East African Community, and a competitor for Chinese infrastructure loans, Gulf State agricultural investments, and Western development finance.

West Africa’s Quiet Rebound and the Energy Factor

West Africa’s growth story is less spectacular than the East’s, but its trajectory is critical for understanding the full picture. The African Development Bank projects regional GDP growth of 4.2% in 2024, while PwC’s 2026 outlook forecasts a steady 4.2% pace supported by domestic demand, infrastructure spending, and rising oil and gas output.

Senegal and Niger are emerging as new hydrocarbon producers, joining Nigeria—still the continent’s largest economy—in a club of energy exporters whose fortunes will increasingly intersect with global decarbonisation debates.

For Latin American energy producers like Brazil, Guyana, and Colombia, West Africa’s expanding output is not just competition. It is a potential alignment of interests in OPEC+ dynamics, methane reduction standards, and the pace of the energy transition.

The inflation picture, however, is sobering. UNECA’s socioeconomic profile for the region shows average inflation at 19.4% in 2024, though easing to 15.8% in 2025—a reminder that growth numbers do not always translate to household stability.

This tension between macroeconomic improvement and lived hardship is one Latin American observers will recognise intimately, from the protests that rocked Chile to Argentina’s enduring inflation trauma.

The West African growth trajectory suggests a region that is stabilising rather than soaring, but its demographic weight—over 400 million people—and its deepening ties to China make it impossible to ignore.

North Africa: Fragile Growth with a Proven Poverty Record

North Africa’s economic performance in 2024 was fragile, with real GDP expanding by just 1.9%—a marginal improvement over 2023. The region’s growth lags behind the continental average, yet its development story contains a paradox that matters for Latin America.

The UN’s Millennium Development Goals tracking showed Northern Africa met the target of halving extreme poverty five years ahead of the 2015 deadline, with the rate dropping from 5% in 1990 to under 1% by 2015. This was achieved despite modest growth rates.

A policy perspective from the Economic Research Forum attributes this success more to social policies and political regimes than to high economic growth—a warning that redistribution without production is unsustainable, and a lesson for Latin American countries banking on conditional cash transfers without productivity gains.

Egypt, with over 118 million residents, and Morocco, with around 38 million, anchor a region of 277 million people that is ’emerging as a growth engine’, according to Global Finance, with combined growth expected to reach 4% in 2025.

The North African story complicates the narrative of an African growth miracle. It suggests that the continent’s economic future will be deeply uneven, with pockets of stagnation sitting alongside breakneck expansion.

For Latin America, this unevenness mirrors its own geography—the Pacific Alliance’s dynamism versus the Southern Cone’s stagnation, or Central America’s demographic bonus versus the Caribbean’s debt overhang.

The China Factor and the Competition for Capital

Underpinning much of Africa’s growth is external demand from China, which has spent two decades building trade corridors, financing infrastructure, and securing mineral supply chains across the continent.

Africa’s growth surge does not decouple it from Asia—it deepens the entanglement. As East African economies expand, their appetite for Chinese machinery, Indian pharmaceuticals, and Gulf logistics grows in tandem.

This is where the direct intersection with Latin America crystallises. Both regions are now competing for the same pool of Chinese overseas infrastructure lending, which has been shrinking since its 2016 peak but remains transformative where it lands.

Both regions are also competing for the new wave of Gulf investment—Saudi and Emirati capital that is diversifying away from hydrocarbons and into African and Latin American agriculture, ports, and critical minerals.

The difference is that Africa is closer, demographically younger, and increasingly seen by Gulf and Asian investors as a more integrated market thanks to the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Latin American policymakers cannot assume that historical ties to Beijing or Washington will insulate them. The competition for the next decade’s development capital will be fierce, and Africa is entering it with stronger growth momentum.

The Mercosur-SACU Bridge: An Underutilised Asset

South Africa’s Preferential Trade Agreement with Mercosur, which entered into force in 2016, is one of the few institutionalised trade bridges directly linking a major African economy with South America’s largest trading bloc.

The agreement covers Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay on one side, and South Africa—the continent’s most advanced and diversified economy—on the other. Yet trade flows under the pact remain far below potential.

South Africa’s government has made clear that implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area is a priority, seeking to unlock opportunities across the continent while also leveraging its free trade deals with the European Union and EFTA.

This creates a window for Latin American firms to use South Africa as a base to reach wider African markets, plugging into value chains in minerals, agriculture, and services where South Africa is already a major producer and exporter.

Brazilian agribusiness equipment, Argentine food-processing technology, and Chilean mining services are all sectors that could find African demand through the South African gateway.

The bridge exists, but it has not been walked across with strategic intent. That calculation looks different when Africa, not Asia, is the fastest-growing continent.

Critical Minerals: The New Geography of Rivalry and Cooperation

Both Africa and Latin America sit atop the minerals that will power the energy transition: lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese, and rare earths. South Africa alone is the world’s largest producer of platinum, vanadium, chromium, and manganese.

The Democratic Republic of Congo dominates cobalt, while Chile and Argentina lead in lithium—a cartography of critical minerals that places both regions at the centre of US-EU-China supply chain competition.

Africa’s growth surge increases the likelihood that mineral wealth will be processed and beneficiated closer to the source, as African governments grow more assertive about capturing value and as Chinese firms build refining capacity on the continent.

This could disrupt the raw-material export model that many Latin American economies still rely on. If African refined cobalt or lithium hydroxide becomes competitive, Latin America’s advantage as a primary extractor diminishes.

Conversely, cooperation between Latin American and African producers could stabilise global prices, share processing technology, and strengthen bargaining power against buyers in Beijing, Brussels, and Washington.

The South Africa-Mercosur agreement offers a platform for exactly this kind of sectoral dialogue, but it remains a diplomatic backwater compared to the attention lavished on Asian and European trade negotiations.

What Latin America Should Do Differently

The first step for Latin American governments and businesses is to treat Africa not as a distant, undifferentiated continent, but as a collection of distinct sub-regional markets with growth trajectories that increasingly resemble—and in key cases exceed—their own.

East Africa, with its 5.8% projected growth and young, digitally connected population, should be on the radar of every Latin American trade promotion agency and export-oriented firm. Kenya and Ethiopia are not potential markets a decade from now; they are viable markets today.

The Mercosur-SACU preferential trade agreement needs to be activated, not just ratified. That means sectoral missions, trade fairs, and a serious diplomatic effort to match the engagement that China and the Gulf States have already deployed.

Latin America should also position itself as a partner, not just a competitor, on critical minerals governance, sharing its experience in lithium extraction and regulation with African counterparts through a South-South framework.

The continent’s major development banks—BNDES, CAF, and Fonplata—could explore co-financing arrangements with the African Development Bank and the African Export-Import Bank, creating financial corridors that bypass the high cost of dollar-denominated intermediation.

The moment requires a mental shift. For a generation, Latin America has oriented its global economic strategy toward Asia. That strategy must now accommodate a new pole of growth rising across the South Atlantic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Africa’s growth surge matter for Latin America?

Africa overtaking Asia as the fastest-growing continent reshapes competition for Chinese and Gulf investment, opens new consumer markets, and creates both rivalry and cooperation potential in critical minerals and agriculture.

Which African region is growing fastest?

Eastern Africa is the continent’s growth engine, with projected 5.8% GDP growth in 2026. Kenya and Ethiopia are the primary drivers, supported by services, infrastructure investment, and external demand from Asia.

Does Latin America have any trade agreements with Africa?

Yes. The Mercosur-SACU Preferential Trade Agreement, in force since 2016, links Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay with South Africa, but trade flows under the pact remain far below potential.

Sources: un.org, pwc.com, knowledgehub-sro-na.uneca.org

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