Central Africa: A Sub-Region Falling Behind?

Central Africa: A Sub-Region Falling Behind?

March 13, 2017

Central Africa scores at, or close to, the bottom of global development indices – with the ECCAS countries recording the highest incidence of poverty among all African REC blocs, despite their shared mineral and other natural resource wealth. Central African countries also score particularly poorly across governance indicators, with Cameroon, CAR, Chad, DRC, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo among the countries at the bottom of the global indices, underscoring fragility in the region as recent elections has shown. And, Central Africa is the sub-region that has advanced the least across all sub-regions of Africa with regard to the regional integration agenda laid out in the AU’s Vision 2063: Unity, Prosperity and Peace. In this publication, UNDP Africa offers a sub-regional strategic assessment of the development context in the sub-region. The Central Africa: A Regional Falling Behind? report is the first in a series of studies taking an explicitly sub-regional approach to analyzing development priorities in Africa.