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IMFBlog2019-03-25T12:37:18-05:00July 21, 2017|
By IMFBlog
July 21, 2017
Construction worker in Uganda (photo: James Akena/Reuters/Newscom)
After two decades of steady growth, Uganda’s economy has slowed, and life for Ugandans is not improving fast enough.
Drought in the Horn of Africa, regional conflict, and slow credit growth have contributed to this decline, with per capita growth falling to ½ percent from an average of 5 percent for the past 20 years. (more…)
IMFBlog2020-07-02T15:52:39-05:00July 1, 2020|
By Ulric Eriksson von Allmen, Purva Khera, Sumiko Ogawa, and Ratna Sahay
عربي, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский
The COVID-19 pandemic could be a game changer for digital financial services. Low-income households and small firms can benefit greatly from advances in mobile money, fintech services, and online banking. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-12-23T11:19:23-05:00December 19, 2019|
Over the past two decades, sub-Saharan Africa has made considerable economic progress: extreme poverty levels have declined by one third; life expectancy has increased by a fifth; and real per capita income has grown by about 50 percent on average. Yet, sub-Saharan Africa is still only half-way to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-09-30T08:36:17-05:00September 30, 2019|
By Esha Chhabra and Bidisha Das
Thanks to mobile money, any person with a basic phone can now make cash transfers, pay bills, and send money to family members abroad without having a bank account. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-03-06T16:04:18-05:00March 6, 2019|
Every day, women around the world experience less opportunity than men in education and employment, and less political representation. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-03-14T15:31:34-05:00February 16, 2018|
By IMFBlog
February 16, 2018
Photo: iStock by Getty Images/subman
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa need to diversify their economies, and the region’s youth need to be at the heart of it, says Axel Schimmelpfennig.
Schimmelpfennig is head of the IMF team for Uganda, and a coauthor of a study that looks at the potential benefits of a stepped-up diversification agenda in sub-Saharan Africa.
In this podcast, Schimmelpfennig talks about the need for sub-Saharan Africa to increase productivity in areas like agriculture and manufacturing to become more competitive in the export market and allow for increasing wages. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-03-15T13:21:23-05:00December 5, 2017|
By Vitor Gaspar and Abebe Aemro Selassie
December 5, 2017
Versions in عربي (Arabic), 中文(Chinese), Español (Spanish), Français (French), 日本語 (Japanese), Русский (Russian)
School children in Ghana: building a country’s tax capacity helps pay for education and health care (photo: Vacca Sintesi/SIPA/Newscom).
Tax revenues play a critical role for countries to create room in their budgets to increase spending on social services like health and education, and public investment. At a time when public debt levels in sub-Saharan Africa have increased sharply, raising tax revenues is the most growth-friendly way to stabilize debt. More broadly, building a country’s tax capacity is at the center of any viable development strategy to meet the ongoing needs for expanding education and health care, and filling significant infrastructure gaps. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-03-25T16:37:14-05:00April 28, 2017|
By IMFBlog
April 28, 2017
Panelists, including IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, discuss global gender challenges.
The world’s economic leaders and stakeholders came together at the 2017 IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings amid a more positive outlook on the global growth, which is forecast to hit its fastest pace in five years. A clear theme running through the meetings was the need to protect the growth momentum, given policy and political uncertainties, and to help ensure that everyone has the opportunity to share in the fruits of global integration and technological progress.
More than 10,000 people took part. In addition to central bankers, finance ministers and other officials, the meetings drew around 650 journalists, 160 parliamentarians from 68 countries, and a record 850 civil society representatives, who gathered to learn, listen, and share their points of view. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-03-26T12:04:27-05:00February 22, 2017|
By Prakash Loungani and Jonathan D. Ostry
Versions in عربي (Arabic), 中文 (Chinese), Français (French), and Español (Spanish)
Over the past three decades, income inequality has gone up in most advanced economies and in many developing ones as well. Why? Much of the research on inequality has focused on advances in technology and liberalization of trade as the main drivers. While technology and trade are global trends that are difficult to resist, IMF studies have shown that the design of government policies matters and can help limit increases in inequality. (more…)
IMFBlog2019-03-26T13:25:50-05:00January 26, 2017|
Versions in: عربي (Arabic), 中文 (Chinese), Français (French), 日本語 (Japanese), Português (Portuguese), Русский (Russian), and Español (Spanish)
Growth is essential for improving the lives of people in low-income countries, and it should benefit all parts of society.
Traveling through Africa in the last few days, I have been amazed by the vitality I have witnessed: business startups investing in the future, new infrastructure under construction, and a growing middle class. Many Africans are now making a better living and fewer are suffering from poverty. My current host, Uganda, for example, has more than halved its absolute poverty rate to about 35 percent from close to 90 percent in 1990.
But we have also seen a flip side. Poverty, of course, but inequality as well remain stubbornly high in most developing countries, including in Africa, and too often success is not shared by all. (more…)
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