New vehicle sales increase in Africa by 32% in 2021

By Moses Akaigwe

The African Association of Motor Manufacturers (AAAM) has released the new vehicle sales volumes as compiled for AAAM by the Africa Automotive Data Network for Africa (AADN).

The figures clearly show that sales have started to recover from a disastrous pandemic-hit 2020, where only 856, 133 new units were sold in Africa, in comparison to sales of 1, 131, 249 in 2021.

Whilst this recovery is very welcome the 2021 figure is still some 20, 000 units below that of the 2019 figure of 1 150 842.

These numbers represent total industry sales volumes as reported by manufacturer by market. For Sub Sahara African only, the volumes exclude heavy commercial Vehicles as these are not reported but estimated by AADN to be less than 5000 units per year.

Of the 1, 131, 249 new vehicles sold in 2021, some 548, 504 were sold in North Africa, and 499 087 were sold within the Southern African Customs Union, with the balance of 83, 658 new vehicles being sold in the rest of Sub Saharan Africa.

Whilst new vehicle sales in all North African countries improved in 2021 over 2019 Morocco, Egypt and Tunisa managed to increase their new vehicle market in 2021 over 2020 despite the pandemic with only Algeria and other smaller North African countries showing a decline in new vehicle sales volumes.

New vehicle sales volumes in South Africa improved by 32 percent in 2021, but were still down by 7 percent over 2019. In the rest of Sub Sahara Africa sales increased by 15 percent but were down by some 10 percent over the 2019 volumes.

Commenting on the 2021 new vehicle sales results for Africa in 2021, David Coffey the CEO of AAAM said “The improved new vehicle sales volumes in 2021 are encouraging and shows that the markets are recovering, as life on the continent and many other places in the world is slowly normalising after the COVID pandemic.

“We believe that this positive trend will continue into 2022 with the reported quarter 1 sales for 2022 some 9 percent up over 2021 and growth will start to accelerate as more countries in Africa embrace the industrialisation and growth opportunity presented by the continental automotive strategy which could see new vehicle sales reaching 5 million units per year by 2035.”Ends.