East Africa (EA) is part of the Sub-Saharan Africa, and consists for the purpose of our association of 6 States: The Republic of Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, the Republic of Burundi.
EA, with a land area of 2.5 million square kilometers, is home to 457,053,000 people, of which over 28.5% is urban population. The population density in EA is 68.5 per km2 and its forests cover 29.3% of total land area. With an annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 5%, the GDP of EA countries for 2021 have reached to US$ 407967 million. (2)
Figure I EA: total population (3)
Due to the poor sanitation and a lack of food, the mortality rate in EA is significantly high. According to United nations (UN), the mortality rate in children under 5 years in EA is approximately 5%, which is 25% higher than the world average level (4%).
Figure II EA: Mortality rate under age 5 (3)
Economic Trend
Among those countries, in 2024, Kenya was the richest in East Africa with US$ 2190 income per capita (4), which already past the international middle-income threshold of US$1036 (5). What’s more, even the economy at the global level has been hit seriously by COVID-19, Kenya’s economy growth remains robust. Followed by Kenya, Tanzania with US$ 1320 per capita caught up fast (6). Next to Tanzania were Rwanda with US$ 997.98 per capita (7) and Uganda with US$ 1250 per capita (8) and finally Burundi has the lowest GDP per capita, which is only US$ 228.82 (9).
Overall, though there is slight fluctuation during the last decades, the economy in EA countries shows an upward trend, except the South Sudan. Due to the unstable political environment and conflicts, the economy of South Sudan has been destroyed.
Figure III EA countries GDP Per capita trend during 1960-2022 (10)
Footnotes
1 As references for these overviews served
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(WHO)World malaria report 2020
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(WHO)HIV country profile 2019
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(UNdata)Country profile2020
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(Worldbank)GPD per capital 2019
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(Worldbank)literacy rate2019
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(Globalreligionfuture)religion file2010
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(UNdata)percentage of population country file
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(Nationmaster)Ethnic groups
2 Source: based on data of 2021 from UNdata (https://data.un.org/en/reg/g14.html)
3 Source: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/910
4 Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/KEN
5 Source: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups
6 Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/TZA
7 Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/RWA
8 Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/UGA
9 Source: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/BDI
10 Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=KE-TZ-RW-BI-UG-SS