The finding covers three of the continent’s biggest economic powers.
South Africa, Africa’s largest economy, and Morocco, the fifth-largest, were not placed on the report’s “no significant progress” list, highlighting a clear divide among Africa’s leading economies in meeting U.S. standards for fiscal disclosure.
The five countries occupy a significant position in Africa’s economic landscape, collectively representing major markets across North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Their economies are driven by a mix of oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, services and financial activity, making transparency in public finances particularly important for investors and lenders.
However, the U.S. assessment is not a ranking of their overall economic governance.
It focuses specifically on whether governments make reliable and accessible information on budgets, revenues, expenditures, auditing, public procurement and, where applicable, natural-resource contracts and sovereign wealth funds available to the public.
What the US found in Africa’s biggest economies
For Nigeria, the report identified several weaknesses in the country’s public-finance reporting.
Nigeria made its enacted budget and end-of-year report widely accessible, including online, and disclosed information on debt obligations, including major state-owned enterprise debt.
However, the U.S. said Nigeria’s budget documents did not provide a substantially complete picture of government revenues and expenditures. Actual revenues and expenditures also did not reasonably correspond with the enacted budget.
The report further found that Nigeria’s supreme audit institution did not meet international standards of independence or publish substantive reports, although it had access to the entire executed budget.
Public procurement was another major weakness, with the U.S. saying Nigeria did not publish accessible information on government procurement contracts.
The findings come as Nigeria continues efforts to improve its public-finance management. The IMF has also raised concerns over expenditure outside the formal budget framework, highlighting the importance of improving the recording and reporting of government spending.
For Egypt and Algeria, the significance is different. Both are among Africa’s largest economies and major regional markets, meaning weaknesses in fiscal disclosure extend beyond smaller or more fragile states.
Egypt similarly failed to meet the minimum requirements and made no significant progress. The country did not publish its executive budget proposal or end-of-year report on time, while key military, intelligence and state-owned enterprise finances remained insufficiently disclosed.
Actual revenues and expenditures also did not reasonably correspond with the enacted budget, and its supreme audit institution lacked sufficient independence.
Algeria published its executive and enacted budgets and disclosed government and major state-owned enterprise debt, but failed to publish its end-of-year report on time.
Its budget also lacked detailed state-owned enterprise information and was not prepared according to internationally accepted principles. However, Algeria’s supreme audit institution met international independence standards and published substantive audit reports.
That places three of Africa’s economic heavyweights in the same category despite their very different economic structures, fiscal systems and levels of development.
Africa’s biggest economies face a wider transparency challenge
The findings are part of a broader pattern across the continent.
The U.S. report assessed dozens of African governments against its fiscal-transparency standards.
While Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Liberia, Libya, Niger, Senegal and São Tomé and Príncipe were also assessed as not meeting the minimum requirements, Washington determined that they had nevertheless made significant progress during the review period.
A country can fail to meet the U.S. minimum standard while still making measurable improvements. The nine countries in that category therefore differ from countries such as Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria, which were assessed as making no significant progress.
The U.S. framework focuses heavily on whether citizens and other stakeholders can obtain meaningful information about how governments raise and spend public money.
Among the measures are whether executive budget proposals are published in a timely manner, whether enacted budgets provide a substantially complete picture of revenues and expenditures, whether actual spending corresponds with approved budgets, whether supreme audit institutions operate independently and whether procurement contracts are publicly accessible.
For Africa’s largest economies, the issue is particularly significant because of the scale of public spending, government borrowing and investment programmes they oversee.
Nigeria, for example, has a projected 2026 nominal GDP of about ₦529 trillion, according to the IMF, while the country’s real GDP is projected to grow by 4.1%.
The larger the public balance sheet, the greater the importance of reliable information on how government resources are collected and spent.
The U.S. findings therefore point to a broader challenge for Africa: economic size does not necessarily translate into stronger public-finance transparency.
And for investors, lenders and citizens, the availability and reliability of government financial information can be just as important as the headline size or growth rate of an economy.