Africa Financial Sector Responses to COVID-19 - MFW4A Tracker

Jul 23, 2020

Rationale

The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly disrupted economic activity around the world and significantly affected global financial conditions. Experts predict that the human and socio-economic consequences will be disastrous for Africa. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, about half of jobs across Africa are at risk and gains in poverty reduction are expected to evaporate. The African financial sector (AFS) has not been spared from this crisis. The challenges are numerous and spread further beyond the regional banking activity.

Governments, as well as regional and international financial sector regulators and development finance institutions (DFIs) have already unveiled unprecedented measures to minimize the Covid-19 economic and financial impact. These actions, which include fiscal, monetary and financial measures, highlight the seriousness of the damages the pandemic has caused and the threat to the financial stability of the continent.

As a Partnership committed to the AFS development and resilience, Making Finance Work for Africa (MFW4A) has implemented a number of recent initiatives to strengthen the resilience of the African financial sector. In addition to its webinars series and discussions aimed at identifying the sector's challenges and solutions, a portal dedicated to domestic, regional, bilateral and multilateral responses to the impact of COVID-19 on the regional financial sector has been set up. The exercise consists in monitoring, collecting and classifying by country or region the measures taken by governments, central banks and DFIs to support the resilience of the AFS vis-à-vis the financial impact of the pandemic.

Countries:

Algeria Algeria