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In
its African Economic Outlook, the Fund forecast growth would
slip to 3 percent this year - the lowest rate since 1999 - from
3.4 percent in 2015.
Growth was expected to recover to 4 percent next year, helped by
a slight recovery in commodity prices, and the IMF said it was
still optimistic about the region's prospects in the longer
term.
"However, to realize this potential, a substantial policy reset
is critical in many cases," the IMF said.
Countries hurt by the drop in commodities prices needed to
control their fiscal deficits, because the declines in revenue
were expected to persist, the IMF said.
Louis Kasekende, the deputy governor of Uganda's central bank,
agreed countries need to rebuild buffers, to help their
economies deal with any external shocks.
"It would be preferable to fund higher public investment by
making savings in recurrent budgets or by strengthening the
domestic tax effort," Kasekende said when the IMF report was
released in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
Angola and Nigeria, both major oil exporters, were hardest hit
by the commodities slump, the report said. So were Ghana, South
Africa and Zambia.
Several southern and eastern African countries, among them
Ethiopia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, were suffering from severe
drought, the IMF said. And Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone
were only gradually recovering from the Ebola epidemic.
However, the report said, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Senegal would
see growth of more than 5 percent, mostly "supported by ongoing
infrastructure investment efforts and strong private
consumption," the report said.
"The decline in oil prices has also helped these countries,
though the windfall has tended to be smaller than expected, as
exposure to the decline in other commodity prices and currency
depreciations have partly offset the gains in many of them," it
said.
(Additional reporting by Duncan Miriri in Nairobi; Editing by
Andrew Heavens, Larry King)
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