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LeadAfrik
Intermediate · Self-paced2026 Edition

African Macro 101

How African economies actually work. Monetary policy, fiscal sustainability, FX regimes, inflation dynamics, capital flows, IMF programs, and sovereign debt — taught from inside the continent, not the textbook.

12

Modules

~10h 10m

Reading time

Intermediate

Level

Self-paced

Format

§

Syllabus

  1. 01

    Why African macro is its own subject

    Why importing US/EU macro frameworks wholesale fails — and the structural features that make Africa different.

    ~35 minModule 01
    →
  2. 02

    Monetary policy and central banking

    Inflation targeting, exchange-rate management, the CBR/MPR/repo rate, and why African central banks operate under tighter constraints than their developed peers.

    ~55 minModule 02
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  3. 03

    Fiscal sustainability and public debt

    Debt-to-GDP, primary balance, growth-interest differential — and the algebra that determines whether a debt path explodes or stabilizes.

    ~55 minModule 03
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  4. 04

    Exchange rate regimes

    Free float, managed float, peg, crawling peg, currency board — what each delivers, what each costs, and the shadow regimes most African countries actually run.

    ~50 minModule 04
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  5. 05

    Inflation: imported, food, and structural

    Why African inflation is mostly food and fuel, why exchange-rate pass-through is high, and what monetary policy can and cannot do about it.

    ~45 minModule 05
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  6. 06

    Capital flows and the carry trade

    Eurobonds, FDI, portfolio inflows, remittances — the four channels and how each behaves under stress. The 2022-23 sudden stop case study.

    ~50 minModule 06
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  7. 07

    IMF programs — what they are, what they do

    EFF, ECF, RCF, RFI — the alphabet soup. What conditionalities mean in practice. Why countries still call the Fund despite the politics.

    ~50 minModule 07
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  8. 08

    Sovereign debt restructuring

    Paris Club, Common Framework, holdouts, bondholder committees, NPVs and haircuts. The mechanics of restructuring and the recent African cases (Zambia, Ghana, Chad).

    ~60 minModule 08
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  9. 09

    Trade, the current account, and AfCFTA

    The current-account identity, commodity dependence, terms-of-trade swings, and AfCFTA's continental free-trade ambition. The structural side of the macro picture.

    ~55 minModule 09
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  10. 10

    Commodities, the resource curse, and the energy transition

    Commodity-export concentration across Africa, the five transmission channels into macro, the resource curse and how Botswana escaped it, and what the energy transition means for African mineral exporters.

    ~55 minModule 10
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  11. 11

    Labour markets, informality, and the youth bulge

    Why 85% of African employment is informal, how 'jobless growth' co-exists with 4-6% GDP growth, and the labour-force absorption gap that is the binding constraint on African development.

    ~50 minModule 11
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  12. 12

    The 2026 outlook — where African macro stands now

    Synthesis: growth, inflation, debt, and the big policy questions for the next 12-24 months. The working dashboard a sovereign analyst maintains.

    ~50 minModule 12
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How to use this course

Start with module 01 if the material is new; skip ahead if you have prior exposure. Each module is self-contained but the arc is sequential — the projects in the final module assume the toolkit from modules 1-11. Every module ends with key takeaways and a curated further-reading list with primary sources.