Ethiopia Rebases GDP to $201 Billion, Now Fifth Largest in Africa

Ethiopia has revised the measured size of its economy up by 59.2 percent after rebasing its national accounts, according to a government presentation reported by Reuters on Thursday, November 5. Gross domestic product for the 2024/25 fiscal year is now put at 24.03 trillion birr, or $201.42 billion, up from 15.09 trillion birr under the old series. The official estimate for 2025/26 rises to 31.86 trillion birr, or $210.7 billion.

Nothing new was produced to create those numbers. The revision rewrites the measuring stick, not the year that was lived. Planning minister Fitsum Assefa presented the new series at a national forum in Addis Ababa, and the ministry report behind it is blunt about what a rebasing is: "This does not mean the economy grew overnight."

What changed in the count

The new series uses 2024/25 as its base year, replacing 2015/16. The exercise began in January 2026 and was completed in September, drawing on an agricultural census, an economic establishment census, an integrated household survey and administrative records, and it aligns the accounts with the 2008 System of National Accounts.

The wider net catches work the old series missed or undercounted: digital finance, capital markets, dry-season irrigation, corridor development projects, mining, manufacturing, informal trade, and, for the first time, fuller data from state-owned enterprises and nonprofit organisations. Real growth for 2025/26, growth stripped of price changes, is estimated at 7.7 percent on the new basis.

Why the ratios move

A bigger denominator changes every ratio the government is judged by, without changing a single birr of debt or tax. On the presentation figures summarised by ThinkBusiness Africa, public debt falls from about 45 percent of GDP to about 27 percent, and tax revenue falls from roughly 9 percent of GDP to about 5.5 percent. The debt stock is the same. The tax take is the same. Both now look smaller against a larger economy.

Oxford Economics, in a note reported by QNC News, made the same point from the creditor side: outstanding debts, servicing costs and foreign currency financing needs remain unchanged. The timing still matters. Ethiopia is working through an International Monetary Fund programme backed by a $3.4 billion Extended Credit Facility, restructuring external debt under the G20 Common Framework, and heading into the fund's sixth programme review. The birr was floated in July 2024 as part of that reform package, a step that cut the country's dollar GDP sharply and let Kenya pass it in recent IMF rankings.

The ranking claim

Assefa said the revised figures place Ethiopia fifth among Africa's economies and third in sub-Saharan Africa. The comparison published with the launch puts South Africa first at $489.1 billion, then Egypt at $442.9 billion, Nigeria at $386.7 billion and Algeria at $331.9 billion, with Ethiopia's $210.7 billion for 2025/26 moving it ahead of Morocco. Rankings built this way depend on how current each country's own data is, and analysts quoted in the coverage caution that peer figures are not all measured the same way.

What happens next

The new series gives the government better-looking debt ratios for its talks with creditors, and a harder question at home: a tax take measured at 5.5 percent of GDP is low by any standard, and the finance ministry says the figures will guide its push to collect more. The IMF review will be the first outside test of the new numbers.