Togo Moves Up a World Bank Income Class. Nobody Earned a Franc More.

Togo is now a lower middle income country. On July 1 the World Bank moved it up from the low income category in its annual update of country income classifications, making Togo the only African economy to change class this year and one of six worldwide. None moved down.

The classification, which will stand until the end of June 2027, sorts 218 economies into four bands by gross national income per person. This year the low income band covers economies at $1,175 or less per person. Togo crossed above it.

What pushed it across was not primarily growth. According to the World Bank's Development Data Group, the deciding factor was a revision to Togo's population estimate. When detailed results from the country's 2022 census were incorporated, the estimate fell by 11.7%. Income per person is a division. The same national income divided among fewer people produces a higher figure for each of them, on paper. Togo's economy did grow by 5.9% in 2025, and exchange rate movements contributed, but the Bank states plainly that the population revision decided the outcome.

The revision does not mean Togo's population shrank, and it does not mean people left. The census, conducted by the national statistics institute INSEED in late 2022, counted 8,095,498 residents, up from 6,191,155 at the previous census in 2010, an average increase of 2.3% a year. What fell was the estimate, not the population. Between censuses, agencies project population forward from the last count using assumed growth rates. Togo's actual growth had slowed from 2.9% a year to 2.3%, and the projections had compounded faster than the country was growing. Over a decade, that gap created roughly a million people who existed in the models and nowhere else. The census removed them.

The consequences of the new status are procedural but real. Income classifications feed into eligibility screening for concessional lending and development assistance, and into how investors and development partners rank economies. A country's borrowing environment can shift because its statistics improved.

ANALYSIS. Togo's case is not an anomaly. It is a demonstration of how much per capita figures across the continent depend on the age of the underlying census. Countries that count their people infrequently are being measured against population guesses that decay every year, in either direction. Jordan crossed an income threshold the same day for the mirror image reason, after a rebasing found its economy nearly 10% larger than previously estimated. The lesson is not that the classifications are unreliable. It is that they measure the state of a country's data as well as the state of its economy. END ANALYSIS.

ARN will publish a fuller examination of population estimates and income measurement across African economies in the coming days.

Sources on record: World Bank Data Blog, July 1, 2026, Metreau, Young and Eapen (reclassification, 11.7% revision figure, 5.9% GDP growth, exchange rate factor, six movers, none down, 218 economies). INSEED RGPH 5 definitive results, presented April 4, 2023 (8,095,498 count, 6,191,155 in 2010, 2.3% intercensal rate). World Bank OGHIST file, July 1, 2026 release (FY27 low income threshold of $1,175, Togo the only African mover).