Morocco overtook South Africa as the continent\u2019s most industrialised economy last year as it upgrades its offering, diversifies exports and implements growth policies, a report showed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhile South Africa remains a continental industrial powerhouse, it continues to experience a steady decline in industrial competitiveness,\u201d the African Development Bank said in its Africa Industrialisation Index for 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years of power shortages, state corruption, political uncertainty and surging living costs have deterred investment and curbed economic growth, with gross domestic product expanding by an average of less than 1% annually over the past decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Cyril Ramaphosa has previously estimated that South Africa needs as much as R1.6 trillion in public-sector infrastructure investment and an additional R3.2 trillion from the private sector to achieve its infrastructure goals by 2030.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gross fixed-capital formation contracted in three of four quarters last year, rising only in the final four months of 2025 in a sign that businesses are beginning to invest in machinery and buildings, which may help lift the economy\u2019s productive capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Industrial capacity remains heavily concentrated in northern and southern Africa, which account for most of the manufacturing output, export sophistication, and industrial competitiveness, the AfDB said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa has lost its title as Africa’s most industrialised economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":838914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[21381,853],"class_list":["post-862090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-morocco","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862090"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862092,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862090\/revisions\/862092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}