The 2025 Africa Country Instability Risk Index

Department of Research, Strategic Studies and International Relations 01-12-2025

By SBM Intelligence

Africa’s instability risk rises, with political fragility and security threats outweighing economic gains across most regions.

The Sub-Saharan Africa geopolitical landscape for 2025 is a mix of enduring pressures and fresh prospects that have defined its risk outlook. Regional expansion, forecast at 3.8% by the International Monetary Fund, shows resilience amid global pressures, while specific events, ranging from coalition strains in South Africa to jihadist sieges in Mali, call for careful handling.

These occurrences, viewed through political, economic, and security perspectives, reveal trends that leaders and investors need to address to tap the region’s population advantage, as more than 620 million people of working age will enter the workforce by 2050. With shifts in play, attention turns to methods that strengthen bodies and widen economic scope. Overall/total average for the countries in 2025 stands at 48, 0.9 points higher than 2024’s average, a testament to the fact that the region’s elites have more work to do in a stability standpoint.

Southern Africa, with an average regional score of 35.2 in 2025, remained the most stable of the four regions from a risk perspective. Things hardly changed from 2024’s score of 35.8. Notable events in the region for 2025 include South Africa’s Government of National Unity wrapping up its first year of measured collaboration between the African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance. Set up after the ANC’s ballot defeat in May 2024, this arrangement has advanced fiscal adjustments, including debt reshaping under the G20 Common Framework.

Even so, debates on value-added tax increases in February held back the national budget, and August’s ministerial changes, along with corruption charges against an ANC official, put pressure on solidarity. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s mid-year assessment in October noted these divides, forecasting a 1.2% growth rate, aided by mining upturns but held in check by infrastructure hold-ups. This economic baggage was what drove its score up from 26 in 2024 to 29 in 2025.

Zambia’s debt agreements with creditors in June released $1.3 billion in assistance, bolstering copper exports and aligning with a 4.3% growth projection for 2025. Botswana’s October parliamentary handover to the Umbrella for Democratic Change commits to fiscal discipline amid gem sector pressures, where Debswana’s production dropped 40% to 15 million carats, prompting a near-zero growth estimate; the new leadership counters this with Qatar’s $12 billion commitment to tourism and renewables, plus a 2026 beneficiation plan to process 50% of gems locally.

 This, in addition to fish and seafood emerging as a significant and fast-growing third major export, contributing an estimated 15.8% to the total, is responsible for its improved score, which rose to 83 in 2025, significantly improving the regional picture. Crucially, the most notable event was Madagascar’s October youth protests over power shortages and graft led to President Andry Rajoelina’s replacement by Colonel Michael Randrianirina as interim head; the military’s rapid handover, driven by calls for accountability, now channels momentum into constitutional updates, all of which combined to reduce Madagascar’s score by 10 places from 60 in 2024 to 50 in 2025. These steps, from coalition building to resource pivots, weave a pattern of adaptation that links Southern Africa’s stability to broader continental flows.

East Africa had a turbulent year and experienced the largest average reduction. The region dropped from 50.7 in 2024 to 55.7 in 2025, a 5% decline, making it the least performing of the four regions examined. Politically, unrests in Kenya and Tanzania, two of the region’s leading economies drove the downward trend, and even more so in the latter where the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi won a landslide presidential election that saw President Samia Suluhu Hassan win 98% of a vote that muzzled opposition even in neighbouring states–a significant development that downvoted its score to 67 from its previous high of 76. Kenya’s 2025 fiscal performance faces drawbacks, including a widening budgetary deficit despite some consolidation efforts, weak revenue collection, and high debt servicing costs that strain the budget.

Other challenges include a high reliance on domestic borrowing, which is more expensive, and potential pressure on the shilling from currency depreciation risks and a negative current account balance driven by import dependency. This, in addition to sporadic protests that are spillovers from protests from the previous year’s youth uprising against the government’s finance bill, which would raise taxes to fix its foreign debt, drove Kenya’s score from 61 to 58. With the war in Sudan reaching new lows, there were no changes in that area.

The one bright spot in the region was Seychelles, which outperformed its projections for the year. The country saw a credit rating upgrade, stronger economic growth driven by tourism, and healthy fiscal and external buffers. However, some risks remain, including high import dependency, global financial volatility, and the need for continued structural reforms. Fitch Ratings upgraded Seychelles’ long-term credit rating from ‘BB-’ to ‘BB’ with a stable outlook in September 2025, reflecting enhanced macroeconomic policy and resilience. It was the most improved country in the region, with a score of 27, down from 2024’s 28.

Comparatively, Central Africa performed just slightly better than East Africa, capping off the year with 56, a -2.4 decrease from the previous year’s high of 58.4. Leading the drawdown is its geopolitics score, which was 5.6 last year, and ended with a regional average of 4, resulting in a -1.6 difference. Driving this is the protracted M23 conflict between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, which saw rapid advances of the armed group in several parts of eastern DRC, amid broken US mediation in mid-2025.

There was also the problem of Chadian involvement in the Sudan war, serving as a placeholder for the Rapid Support Forces, as well as Cameroon’s chequered elections that returned Paul Biya to the presidency for the 8th consecutive term, extending his reign as the world’s oldest leader. One bright spot, however, emerged from Congo Brazzaville (55), which has been unfazed by the wider regional instability and has been boosted by improvements in scores for both history and geopolitics risk indicators.

Shifting to West Africa, with a regional average score of 45.2–a decline from the previous year’s high of 44.3–, political flux shapes the narrative, with Nigeria’s September rumours of a coup involving 16 detained officers prompting President Bola Tinubu’s prompt military reshuffle, which eased immediate alarms while revealing strains from subsidy removals that ignited 2024 demonstrations against hunger and misgovernance.

However, despite the pressure from the coup and mounting insecurity, it was not enough to improve its country score, which worsened this year by 3 points, taking it from 49 to 52. This was aided by relatively modest signs of improvement, with a positive outlook driven by easing inflation, a stabilising naira, and increased confidence. While structural challenges and risks remain, key indicators such as the balance-of-payments surplus, the GDP growth forecast, and foreign exchange market stability suggest a more positive and resilient economic environment than in previous periods.

Inflation has been declining, reaching 18.02% by September 2025 after peaking higher in early 2024. The Nigerian naira is stabilising, and the “willing buyer-willing seller” FX market model has led to improved liquidity and closed the premium between official and parallel market rates. However, the most significant improvement came from Senegal (27), whose biggest boost came from the end of the long-running Casamance conflict, mediated by Guinea-Bissau in February 2025, which would lead to the disarmament and reintegration of the separatists.

 Part of what made Senegal improve by five places (from 2024’s 32) is its economic growth, which some, like the AFDB, predict to be 10% for 2025. Mali’s poor handling of the security situation further reduced its ranking, as it fell to 69, only three places better than Burkina Faso’s 72 for the year under review.

With 2025 drawing to a close, sub-Saharan Africa’s course depends on tailored leadership. Ahead into 2026, many of these risks are likely to remain, and from a security standpoint, likely to get worse, especially if JNIM succeeds in toppling the junta in Bamako. Lastly, one central area that may drive down the total score in the coming year is leadership and governance, owing to the continent’s increasing flirtation with democratic backsliding.