Africa’s pension industry

The latest Bright Africa Pensions research highlights the measures required to improve future pension coverage for economically active Africans.

Foreword

Where pensions systems exist across most of Africa, they do so against a backdrop of elevated levels of informality in labour markets. The result is that the pension contributions outside of the public sector are intermittent and relatively low.

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Pension funds and social security

The standard narrative across the continent is of a small percentage of the population in formal employment for whom social security is possible.

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Early adopters of technology

Africa can leverage its high mobile telephony penetration and digital adoption to tackle a foundational challenge to improved provision of social protection: enrollment.

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Africa’s pension fund assets

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), assets in pension funds continued to grow throughout 2020, growing by 11% from the end of 2019 to a reported USD56 trillion as of the end of 2020.

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Conclusion

Pension savings on the continent are growing, but this growth can be accelerated through paradigm shifts around pension policy, regulation, incentives and mediums to enable greater participation rates.

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