This Element is an excerpt from Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think (ISBN: 9780132339421) by Vijay Mahajan. Available in print and digital formats.

The surprising numbers: why Africa is a larger market than you ever realized.

If Africa were a single country, according to World Bank data, it would have had $978 billion total gross national income in 2006. This places it ahead of India as a total market. Africa would be the tenth largest economy in the world, ahead of every vaunted BRIC economy (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) except for China.