• While the global economy achieved its strongest five-year recovery since the 1960s, much of Africa, including Zimbabwe, remains stagnant with limited per capita income growth
• Income inequality between advanced and developing economies has widened by roughly 10% since 2019
• Zimbabwe exemplifies the challenge: 60–70% of university and college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, often relying on informal or short-term work

Harare - The global economy has just completed its strongest recovery from a recession in more than 60 years. Yet across much of Africa, that recovery has barely registered, exposing a widening gap between global growth headlines and lived economic reality in the developing world.

According to the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects published in January 2026, global GDP per capita in 2025 stood about 10% above pre-pandemic levels, making the rebound from the COVID-19 shock the most resilient five-year recovery since the 1960s.

‘’ The global economy has shown greater-than expected resilience to major shifts in the trading system, heightened policy uncertainty, and geopolitical tensions, reads the outlook.

Inflation has eased across most major economies, financial conditions loosened in the latter half of 2025, and advanced economies have largely returned to their pre-crisis growth paths. From a purely global perspective, the recovery appears not only complete, but impressive.

However , this recovery has been deeply uneven, and Africa sits on the wrong side of that divide.

Nearly 90% of advanced economies now enjoy per capita incomes higher than they did in 2019. Though by contrast, the World Bank estimates that more than one-quarter of emerging and developing economies remain poorer than before the pandemic.

Among low-income countries, more than 40% have yet to regain lost ground, while in fragile and conflict-affected states many of them in Sub-Saharan Africa the share still below pre-pandemic income levels approaches 60%.

Instead of narrowing, the income gap between the poorest countries and advanced economies has widened by roughly 10% since 2019, reversing years of slow but steady convergence.

Sub-Saharan Africa illustrates this divergence with particular clarity. While the region is forecast to grow by about 4.3% in 2026 and 4.5% in 2027, population growth of between 2.5 and 3% absorbs much of that expansion.

In per capita terms, income gains remain modest, leaving living standards broadly stagnant and fiscal pressures elevated. Growth is occurring, but it is not transformative. It is enough to keep economies afloat, but not enough to lift them decisively forward.

At the centre of this problem is a jobs deficit that global growth alone has failed to resolve. The World Bank estimates that 1.2 billion young people will enter the labour force across emerging and developing economies by 2035, with Sub-Saharan Africa contributing the largest share.

However , investment levels across the region remain too low to generate labour-absorbing growth at the required scale. In low-income countries, the proportion of young people not in employment, education, or training has risen by circa 20% since 2016, highlighting the disconnect between economic expansion and opportunity creation.

Zimbabwe offers a concrete illustration of how this continental challenge plays out at national level. Each year, the country produces an estimated 30,000 to 45,000 new university and college graduates, based on enrolment and completion trends reported by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education and ZIMSTAT.

As a result, labour market surveys and development partners estimate that between 60 and 70% of Zimbabwean graduates are unemployed or underemployed after finishing their studies, many surviving through informal trading, short-term contracts, or subsistence activities that do not utilise their training.

This outcome is often mischaracterised as a failure of education systems to produce the right skills. But the deeper problem lies elsewhere. Zimbabwe’s economy, like many across Africa, remains too informal, too capital-constrained, and too unstable to absorb skilled labour at scale.

Macroeconomic instability compounds the problem. Currency volatility, inflation shocks, and shifting policy signals raise the cost of doing business and discourage long-term investment decisions.

In such an environment, firms prioritise flexibility over permanence, opting for casualisation, outsourcing, or automation rather than hiring full-time staff. At the same time, global trade conditions are becoming less supportive.

The World Bank projects that trade growth will slow from 3.4% in 2025 to about 2.2% in 2026 as tariff front-loading fades and global demand for goods softens, limiting export-led job creation opportunities for small, open economies like Zimbabwe.

This combination of weak investment, rapid population growth, and limited job creation is as a low-growth, high-pressure equilibrium. Education expands, expectations rise, but opportunity fails to keep pace.

Over time, this dynamic fuels outward migration, accelerates brain drain, and erodes confidence in education as a pathway to upward mobility. It also carries political and social risks, as large pools of educated but idle youth place growing pressure on already stretched states.

The strongest global recovery in six decades has demonstrated that the world economy can rebound from shock. What it has not demonstrated is that recovery, on its own, delivers development. For Africa, and for countries like Zimbabwe, growth that does not consistently outpace population expansion and translate into employment risks entrenching poverty, inequality, and instability rather than alleviating them.

The path forward, is narrow but clear, economies must shift toward investment-led, job-rich growth in sectors capable of absorbing labour at scale, including energy, agriculture value chains, tourism, health services, and light manufacturing.

At the same time, restoring macroeconomic credibility and crowding in private capital are no longer optional reforms but necessary conditions for turning skills into productivity and education into income.

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