African FDI fell 26% in 2025. It is the same one transaction, in reverse.
Two editions, two headlines, one $35bn cheque behind both. What the underlying number is, and what the quiet revision from $97bn to $94bn should tell you.
7 min read FDI · Egypt · Capital flows
In 2025 UNCTAD reported that foreign direct investment into Africa had reached $97bn, an increase of 75% on the year before. The figure went into almost every presentation about the continent. The sentence that followed it in the report went into very few.
Most of that rise was one transaction: Egypt’s Ras El-Hekma development, a $35bn commitment from Abu Dhabi’s ADQ, landing in a single year and a single country. Strip it out and inflows grew by roughly 12%.
US$ billion
The headline 75% rise was measured against a 2024 figure that has since been revised down, and that was inflated by one deal. The 26% fall reported for 2025 measures the absence of that deal, not a change in appetite.
UNCTAD World Investment Report, 2025 and 2026 editions
A year later, both halves of that came due
The 2026 edition reports $70bn for 2025, and it revised 2024 down from $97bn to $94bn. So the headline is a 26% fall, and it is being reported as one.
It is not a 26% fall in anything an investor cares about. The comparison runs against a year inflated by a single $35bn cheque, so what the number actually measures is the absence of that one deal. UNCTAD says as much: 2025 was still the third-highest level since 1990 and roughly a third above the continent’s long-run average. Global FDI rose 6% to $1.6tn over the same period, so Africa did underperform the global trend this year, which is the real finding and is not what the headline says.
$94bn
FDI into Africa, 2024, as revised
First published as $97bn in the 2025 edition and revised to $94bn a year later. Most of the 2024 rise was a single transaction, Egypt’s $35bn Ras El-Hekma development; excluding it, inflows rose roughly 12%.
UNCTAD World Investment Report, 2026
$70bn
FDI into Africa, 2025
Down 26% on 2024, and still the third-highest level since 1990, roughly a third above the continent’s long-run average. Global FDI rose 6% to $1.6tn over the same period.
UNCTAD World Investment Report, 2026
The revision is the quieter lesson
$97bn became $94bn between one edition and the next. Nobody announced it. Anyone still quoting $97bn is quoting a superseded number, and anyone who built a 2025 forecast on it is carrying a three-billion-dollar error they have not noticed. Official statistics are restated routinely; the practical defence is to date every figure you use and re-check it against the current edition before it goes in front of a committee.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| FDI into Africa 2024, as first published (WIR 2025) | $97bn |
| FDI into Africa 2024, as revised (WIR 2026) | $94bn |
| Ras El-Hekma, Egypt: one transaction | $35bn |
| Underlying 2024 increase excluding that transaction | ~+12% |
| FDI into Africa 2025 (WIR 2026) | $70bn |
| Reported change 2024 to 2025 | −26% |
| Rank of 2025 among all years since 1990 | 3rd highest |
| Global FDI 2025 | $1.6tn, +6% |
Source: UNCTAD World Investment Report, 2026.
Where the money actually went
Egypt took $15.5bn in 2025, its fourth consecutive year as the continent’s largest recipient. Nigeria took $4bn, Morocco $3.3bn, Kenya $3.2bn and Ghana $1.9bn. The distribution is the point: a handful of markets take most of what arrives, and the same concentration shows inside the regional blocs, where 90% of COMESA inflows go to five countries (UNCTAD COMESA Investment Report, 2025).
For an allocator that is useful rather than discouraging. The map of where capital already goes is short, the infrastructure that supports foreign investment is concentrated in the same places, and a first African position has a small number of sensible starting points rather than fifty-four.
What to do with this
Use $70bn, dated 2025, from the 2026 edition. Use the 12% underlying figure when the point is a trend rather than a total. Treat any 2024 number you are shown as provisional until you have checked which edition it came from. And when a counterparty quotes either the 75% rise or the 26% fall without the Ras El-Hekma caveat, that is a reasonable early read on how carefully they handle the rest of their numbers.
