With the end of 2024 upon us, we look back at a year of shifts in the global economy, trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). About 50 weekly Graph Time newsletters were delivered directly to our readers’ inboxes with timely data visualisations and analysis on these topics (sign up for free to not miss out in 2025).

We explored everything from population growth to manufacturing, airports, Gulf investment in Africa and the rise of Chinese companies on the global stage. As we take stock of the year and look ahead, here is a list of our 10 best performing data stories of 2024:

In April 2024, the IMF forecast that the world economy would grow by 3.2% both in 2024 and 2025. While there are fears of sluggish global gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the next decade, several developing economies have strong short-term prospects. 

The economy with the highest GDP growth forecast in 2024 was Guyana, which the IMF expects to expand by 33.9% in 2024 due to an oil and gas boom started by a massive offshore discovery in 2015. The Chinese special administrative region of Macao placed second and was the only advanced economy to make the list.

Worries about cheap Chinese exports flared up in 2024. In April, US president Joe Biden tripled tariffs on some Chinese steel and aluminium products. Mexico, India and Brazil also imposed similar duties.

The trade restrictions were a response to the massive growth of Chinese steelmaking capacity — which is more than double the operating steel capacity found in the US, EU and India combined. Industry in other countries accuse China of steel dumping, where companies export steel at prices lower than those they charge at home.

There were fewer FDI projects in 2023 than a year earlier. Nonetheless, several cities and regions saw incredible growth, as shown in our study into the 100 fastest-growing subnational locations for greenfield FDI. 

The cities that topped the list were Mannheim in German, Craiova in Romania and Azerbaijan’s capital Baku. Sumatra in Indonesia was the fastest-growing FDI region in 2023, followed by Calabarzon in the Philippines and Baden–Württemberg, Germany.

Nearshoring, or the movement of production closer to end-consumers, is on the rise around the world. Greenfield FDI into factories in nearshoring locations close to western Europe has been on an upward trajectory since the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Between 2022 and 2023, more than $82bn was pledged to manufacturing projects in 15 nearshoring destinations in central and eastern Europe and north Africa, according to fDi Markets. 

Investors from the Middle East have become much more active, particularly in Africa. Companies based in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries — namely the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman — announced 74 FDI projects in Africa worth more than $53bn in 2023, according to fDi Markets. 

While preliminary FDI data for January to October 2024 show this fell to about $5bn this year, the ambitions of Middle Eastern investors across the vast and diverse African continent are here to stay.

The global population is projected to grow from 8.16 billion people today to more than 9.6bn people in 2050, according to the latest revision of the UN’s population estimates released in July.

High fertility rates and youthful populations in large developing countries are the main drivers of the growth. Nations like India, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are all expected to have more than 100 million additional people by 2050.

The energy transition is still a major driver of greenfield FDI. Our 2023 investment matrix showed that investors in hydrogen and other emerging clean technologies were once again the most active, followed by other renewables like solar and wind.

FDI into semiconductors fell between 2022 and 2023, but has since surged, with many of the largest ten FDI projects of 2024 announced in the critically important sector.

Manufacturing investment in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) has surged. More than $124bn was pledged to greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) projects to build factories in Asean in 2022 and 2023, according to fDi Markets.

In the wake of Covid-era troubles, Asean even overtook China as a destination for foreign manufacturing investment in 2023. Many Chinese companies have also set up facilities in the 10-country bloc.

Airports are inseparable from global trade and investment. A 2023 analysis by data provider OAG shows the airports that are the most internationally connected, a key factor assessed by investing multinationals. London’s Heathrow was the most connected, followed by JFK in New York, Amsterdam’s Schipol and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. 

Chinese outbound greenfield FDI reached a new high in 2023, while inbound investment plummeted. The profile of Chinese FDI has undergone a significant shift from capital importer to exporter.

More than 80% of total FDI flowing into and out of China was outbound greenfield FDI in 2023, according to fDi Markets, with large pledges from Indonesia to Hungary, Morocco and Mexico.

Do you want more FDI stories delivered directly to your inbox? Subscribe to our newsletters.