The World Bank has revealed a concerning trend in the global economy, with a quarter of developing countries now poorer than they were in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The Washington-based organisation found that a large group of low-income nations, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, have suffered significant setbacks in the six years since the pandemic began.
The report names countries such as Botswana, Namibia, the Central African Republic, Chad and Mozambique as being among those that have seen average incomes decline over this period. Even economic powerhouses like South Africa and Nigeria failed to raise average incomes, growing by just 1.2% and 4.4% respectively last year.
Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist, warned that these trends cannot be explained by misfortune alone. “In far too many developing countries, they reflect avoidable policy mistakes,” he said. Gill emphasised that governments in emerging and advanced economies must take aggressive action to liberalise private investment and trade, rein in public consumption, and invest in new technologies and education to avert stagnation and joblessness.
The report paints a sobering picture of the global economy’s trajectory since the pandemic. Global growth has “downshifted” and is now “insufficient to reduce extreme poverty and create jobs where they’re needed most,” the World Bank said. Economic growth in emerging markets and developing economies is estimated to slow from 4.2% last year to 4% in 2023.
While the US economy performed better than expected in 2025, growing by 2.1%, the eurozone lagged behind, growing by just 0.9% that year and projected to reach 1.2% in 2026. The World Bank expects China, the world’s second-largest economy, to grow at 4.4% this year and 4.2% next year – the lowest rates in 35 years and below the Communist Party’s 5% target.
Gill warned that the global economy has become less capable of generating growth, while seemingly more resilient to policy uncertainty. “But economic dynamism and resilience cannot diverge for long without fracturing public finance and credit markets,” he said.
The World Bank’s findings underscore the uneven and fragile nature of the global economic recovery, with many developing nations still struggling to regain their footing in the wake of the pandemic. Policymakers will need to act decisively to address the structural challenges facing these economies and put them back on a path to sustainable growth.