Africa is the poorest continent, by far, with only a few percent of the World's GDP created by it's 53 countries. The biggest economy on the continent belongs to South Africa, but on a global scale they only rank at number 32 in the rich-list of nations. In fact only the top four African economies mentioned below actually make it into the World's top 50 economies based on GDP. Even though South Africa is the continent's financial leader, by 2001 only 85% of homes in the country had access to clean water, 70% had electricity and just 50% had toilets which flush, and these statistics are presumed to have remained at a similar level to this day.

We have chose to include both the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) estimates along with those from the World Bank, and the variations in the two sets of figures can be explained by different testing criteria and techniques by the World's two 'most trusted' financial institutions. The figures below are listed by 'nominal' Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which measures the market value of all goods and services from an entire nation in a given year.