CAIRO – 24 March 2026: The 2025 World Investment Report issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) showed that member states of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) delivered strong investment performance in 2024, with foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows reaching nearly $65 billion, reflecting a 154 percent increase compared to the previous year, despite weaker global investment trends.
The report noted that this growth came at a time when global FDI flows declined by 11 percent, amid tighter financing conditions, higher interest rates, persistent economic uncertainty, and ongoing geopolitical tensions.
Egypt played a central role in driving this expansion, with FDI inflows rising sharply from $9.8 billion in 2023 to approximately $46.6 billion in 2024, accounting for more than 70 percent of total investments across the bloc.
The report also stressed that the strong performance was not limited to a single major project, indicating that investment inflows would have still grown by 16 percent even without it, highlighting broader improvements in the investment climate.
In terms of distribution, the report showed that five countries, Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya, attracted nearly 90 percent of total inflows, underscoring the continued concentration of investments within a limited number of markets.
Meanwhile, several other countries recorded notable progress, with Zambia registering a significant increase in investment inflows, while FDI rose by 22 percent in Ethiopia and by 21 percent in both Tunisia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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