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Africa and the Great Recession: Changing Times

Sub-Saharan Africa's solid growth record has been supported by several factors, including significantly less civil conflict, the generally favorable commodity price developments benefiting Africa’s natural resource exporters; and the extensive debt relief provided to most highly-indebted poor countries. But I would ascribe key importance to sound policy choices by African governments – both in terms of pursuing appropriate macroeconomic policies and pressing ahead with important reform measures.

By | May 14th, 2012|Advanced Economies, Africa, Asia, Debt Relief, Economic Crisis, Economic outlook, Economic research, Emerging Markets, Employment, Europe, growth, Inequality, International Monetary Fund, LICs, Low-income countries, Politics, Public debt, recession|6 Comments
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Top Links from the IMF – Global and Regional Economic Analysis for April

The IMF and World Bank have just wrapped up their Spring Meetings for April, dominated by agreement on a huge boost to the anti-crisis firewall to prevent contagion in the event of a flare-up.

By | April 22nd, 2012|Advanced Economies, Africa, Asia, Economic Crisis, Economic outlook, Economic research, Emerging Markets, Employment, Europe, Finance, Financial Crisis, Globalization, growth, IMF, Inequality, International Monetary Fund, Latin America, LICs, Low-income countries, Middle East, Public debt|4 Comments
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Shared Frustrations: How to Make Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa More Inclusive

Suddenly it's the thing everyone is talking about. Income inequality. In North Africa and the Middle East, jobless youth sparked the Arab Spring. In the United States, the growing gap between rich and poor is the “meta concern” of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Worldwide, frustrations appear to be on the rise. And, in sub-Saharan Africa, sustained economic growth may have produced tremendous advances, but a large proportion of the population is still living in poverty. Here, the underlying situation is a little more complex. In July, I wrote about the importance of inclusive growth and whether economic growth was a necessary or a sufficient condition for poverty reduction. Our latest Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa takes that thinking a step further, with new analysis that looks at how living standards for the poorest households have actually been changing in some countries in the region.

By | October 19th, 2011|Africa, Economic outlook, Français, growth, Inequality, International Monetary Fund|3 Comments
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IMF Opens Up: Partnerships with Donors a Win-Win

Technical assistance in the IMF’s areas of core expertise is not only an important complement to the IMF’s policy advice in many countries but also helps them pursue their broader developmental and poverty reduction strategies by strengthening their capacity in macroeconomic management.

By | March 18th, 2010|Africa, IMF, International Monetary Fund, Low-income countries, Multilateral Cooperation|0 Comments
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IMF Helping Africa Through the Crisis

By Antoinette Sayeh

I believe that Africa’s needs must be fully reflected in any global response to this unprecedented recession. With similar intentions, leading policymakers and stakeholders in Africa gathered in Tanzania last March to discuss how to work with the IMF on this. Under the leadership of President Kikwete and IMF Managing Director Strauss-Kahn, the participants agreed to build a new, stronger partnership.

More than just rhetoric, these common goals included the IMF seeking more resources for Africa and reacting more rapidly, responsively, and flexibly. While much remains to be done, I think it is a fair to say that we have achieved a remarkable amount on both fronts—more in fact than I could have imagined when I started in my job just a little over a year ago.

My colleague, Hugh Bredenkamp has done a fine job detailing the IMF’s response to the needs of low-income countries. In  this post, I would like to talk a little about what it all means for Africa.

Sorting cashew nuts in Tanzania

Sorting cashew nuts in Tanzania

As a reminder, the IMF agreed to mobilize $17 billion through 2014 for lending to low income countries, mostly in Africa—trebling our lending capacity to these countries. This goes far beyond the promise given by our Managing Director in Tanzania to seek a doubling of concessional resources. The financial terms of IMF support have also become more concessional, with zero interest until the end of 2011, and will remain more concessional thereafter.

And the IMF has moved quickly to deploy these resources in Africa. Among international institutions, it has an extraordinary capacity to react early to a country’s needs, as I know from my own experience as a policymaker in my home country of Liberia. Indeed, in the first eight months of 2009, we committed over $3 billion in new resources to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, trebling the total stock of outstanding commitments this year alone.

Continue reading “IMF Helping Africa Through the Crisis” »

By | September 10th, 2009|Africa, concessional lending, Economic Crisis, International Monetary Fund, Low-income countries|9 Comments
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