plate 272 · 2025 data

Guinea rose from 17th to second for investment in Africa

Foreign direct investment received, US$, Africa's top ten of 2025 ranked, 2024 vs 2025 (Guinea's 2025 an UNCTAD estimate).

Africa's century
  1. 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
  2. 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
  3. 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
  4. 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
  5. 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
  6. 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
  7. 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
  8. 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
  9. 9. Nearly two in three people in Africa are still offline
  10. 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
  11. 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
  12. 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
  13. 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
  14. 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
  15. 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
  16. 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
  17. 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
  18. 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
  19. 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
  20. 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
  21. 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
  22. 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
  23. 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
  24. 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
  25. 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
  26. 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
  27. 27. Guinea overtook Australia as the world's biggest bauxite miner
  28. 28. DR Congo passed Chile in refined copper
  29. 29. Burkina Faso now sends half its exports to the UAE
  30. 30. Nouakchott's mobile internet sped from Africa's slowest to top 30
  31. 31. Nigeria now imports more solar panels than generators
  32. 32. Zimbabwe climbed to fourth among the world's lithium miners
  33. 33. Services now employ twice as many Ghanaian women as farms
  34. 34. Sub-Saharan Africa doubled its grain, mostly by farming more land
  35. 35. Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
  36. 36. France fell from first to third among Côte d'Ivoire's suppliers
  37. 37. China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric
  38. 38. Guinea rose from 17th to second for investment in Africa
$7.8 bn

Foreign direct investment into Guinea in 2025, up from $1.4 bn in 2024: more than five times as much.

2nd

Only Egypt drew more foreign investment in Africa in 2025; a year earlier Guinea ranked 17th.

×44

Guinea's inflows against $176 M in 2020: UNCTAD points to bauxite and iron ore mining projects.

the numbers & method
Guinea rose from 17th to second for investment in Africa. Source: UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2026, annex table 1, 2025.
2024 (bn)2025 (bn)
Egypt46.615.5
Guinea1.47.8
Mozambique3.65.7
Nigeria1.64.0
Ethiopia4.03.8
Uganda3.13.4
Morocco1.73.3
Kenya2.33.2
Côte d'Ivoire1.52.0
Ghana1.81.9

Claim types Fact · Estimate

UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2026, annex table 1 (FDI inflows by region and economy, 2020–2025, US$ millions), read on UNCTAD's own PDF; context from the WIR 2026 regional trends note on Africa (unctad.org/system/files/non-official-document/wir2026-regional_trends_africa_en.pdf), which says Guinea's inflows rose more than fivefold to about $8 bn on mining projects in bauxite and iron ore. Guinea's 2025 value (7,763) is flagged by UNCTAD as an estimate, as are Ethiopia's (3,796) and Côte d'Ivoire's (2,026). Inflows, US$ M, 2024 → 2025: Egypt 46,578 → 15,453; Guinea 1,402 → 7,763; Mozambique 3,553 → 5,693; Nigeria 1,614 → 4,005; Ethiopia 3,984 → 3,796; Uganda 3,116 → 3,358; Morocco 1,748 → 3,338; Kenya 2,324 → 3,200; Côte d'Ivoire 1,477 → 2,026; Ghana 1,766 → 1,908. Guinea 2020–2023: 176, 198, 658, 1,315. Ranks are progrss calculations: the chart ranks Africa's ten biggest recipients of 2025 among themselves; among all African economies in the table Guinea was 17th in 2024 (behind Egypt, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda, DR Congo, South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Namibia, Ghana, Morocco, Tanzania, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Mauritania) and 2nd in 2025. South Africa is reported on an asset/liability basis; Sudan has no data. ×44 = 7,763 ÷ 176 and 'more than five times' = 7,763 ÷ 1,402 = 5.5 are progrss calculations. Egypt's 2024 figure includes the Ras El-Hekma deal. Takeaway 3's link to mining is UNCTAD's own reading.

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