Zeine Zeidane stepped into one of the IMF's most watched roles and made his point quickly. Speaking on Thursday 15 October alongside the release of the institution's regional economic outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, the new IMF Africa Department director led with cautious optimism: the region is holding up, but the clouds are real.
The headline number is encouraging. The IMF projects Sub-Saharan Africa to grow at 4.5% in both 2026 and 2027, a figure that is 0.2 percentage points higher than the April forecast. Zeidane credited that resilience to hard-won reforms and rapid adaptation across several of the region's major economies.
Still, he was careful not to let the upgrade become a celebration. "Resilience is not immunity," he said plainly, signalling that structural vulnerabilities across the continent's 45 member states have not disappeared. His sharpest warning was about the cost of that resilience: borrowing against tomorrow to look strong today is not a strategy that holds.
The title of the outlook report, Resilient Growth, Clouded Outlook, does the work that a press conference sometimes cannot. It holds both truths at once, and Zeidane seems determined to hold them there too.
Originally published by African Business.