Opening Session : Opening Remarks by Co-Chairs

The monetary policy report submitted by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to the U.S. Congress on Friday Feb. 19 showed that the Fed’s members have improved economic growth expectations for 2021 and 2022, expect lower unemployment rates. Meanwhile, only two of the 18 participants projected PCE (personal consumption expenditures) inflation to (slightly) exceed the 2% that serves as the longer-run objective for the monetary policy regime. In this context, is there ...

La vanille est un produit d’exportation phare de Madagascar qui dispose, pour cette matière première unique, d’un quasi-monopole mondial. Si les recettes d’exportation qui en découlent sont essentielles pour l’île Rouge, leur variabilité, conjuguée à celle d’autres produits, tels que le nickel, n’est pas sans poser d’importants problèmes macroéconomiques en raison de la faible diversification de sa balance commerciale. Conséquence de la chute des cours depuis les sommets atteints en ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed new vulnerabilities in social, infrastructure, and governance systems. In the first months of the pandemic, there was a genuine concern about the capacity of the Global South to contain the spread of the virus. African cities were particularly vulnerable, with some experts1, including the head of WHO2, predicting a catastrophe for the continent. Despite the structural and chronic challenges that African cities face, including informality, poverty, a ...

This paper provides a preliminary assessment of COVID-19’s impact on Africa, focusing on the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, based on information available as of October 2020. We first identify the two key long-term issues of the SSA countries before the crisis: resource dependency and slow productivity growth. COVID-19 has hit SSA countries hard, causing human and economic destruction and wiping out economic progress from the last decade. Instead of growing at 2.9% in 2020, as ...

While the economic recovery around the world remains uneven, fragile, and unbalanced across sectors, financial markets are generally doing very well, thanks! In the United States, only half of the unemployment caused by the pandemic last year has been reversed, while stock markets continued to boom. Of course, this largely reflected the extraordinary support given by monetary authorities since March last year. As in the period after the 2007-08 global financial crisis, voices have ...

Regional integration in Africa is seen as a priority by many of the continent’s policymakers and economic stakeholders. With all Africa now signed up to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), the challenge now is to implement a continental market for goods and services and establish the foundations of a continental customs union. Many on the continent see the AfCFTA as an investment, economic-diversification, and job-creation blueprint that will shape the future of A ...