{
  "title": "Charting a Path for a Resilient Recovery in Sub Saharan Africa",
  "publication": "IMF Blog, September 15, 2020",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2020/09/15/blog-charting-a-path-for-a-resilient-recovery-in-sub-saharan-africa",
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  "summary": "Authors and date: Kristalina Georgieva, Abebe Aemro Selassie; September 15, 2020.",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "Overview and urgency",
      "content": "- Authors and date: Kristalina Georgieva, Abebe Aemro Selassie; September 15, 2020.\n- Core message: The COVID‑19 crisis presents an opportunity to use fiscal support to build a smarter, greener and more equitable future in sub‑Saharan Africa by prioritizing resilience to increasingly frequent climate‑related and other shocks.\n- Regional vulnerability highlighted: sub‑Saharan Africa is especially vulnerable to climate‑related shocks because of heavy dependence on rain‑fed agriculture and limited adaptive capacity."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Why resilience matters",
      "content": "- Finding: Over the medium term, annual per capita economic growth can decline an additional 1 percentage point with each drought.\n- Comparative impact: That impact is eight times worse than for an emerging market or developing economy in other parts of the world.\n- Digital expansion potential: Expanding internet access in sub‑Saharan Africa by 10 percent of the population could increase real per capita GDP growth by as much as 4 percentage points.\n- Broader effects: A recovery that raises resilience will translate into higher living standards, better‑quality jobs, and more opportunity."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Empowering people (health, education, digital skills)",
      "content": "- Health and nutrition:\n  - Investing in healthcare and education pays dividends in growth, productivity, gender equity, and living standards.\n  - Good health reduces extra medical spending and shortens recovery time, protecting labor and schooling continuity.\n  - Example: Better education on climate impacts helps safeguard agricultural output (Chad: improved water retention via new rainwater harvesting techniques).\n- Digital and technological adoption:\n  - Sierra Leone launched a drone corridor to monitor agricultural conditions and enable rapid delivery of medicine (first in West Africa).\n  - Mobile networks enable early warning systems and weather information, including simple voice messages.\n- Labor market and gender impacts:\n  - Digitally‑connected firms in the region employ eight times more workers, and create higher skilled, full‑time jobs.\n  - Increased internet penetration is associated with a larger share of women working in the services sector—the shift to more employment in services is two and a half times larger for women than men.\n- Policy implication: Invest in building digital skills to create new, better jobs and to spread the benefits of digital integration."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Enhancing infrastructure (digital and climate‑resilient)",
      "content": "- Need for targeted infrastructure investment:\n  - Investments should be smart, green and inclusive, and encompass digital‑friendly traditional infrastructure and digital‑ready information technology infrastructure.\n- Connectivity status:\n  - Almost all countries in the region, except just a few, are connected through submarine cables or via cross‑border terrestrial links, but more is needed to improve within‑country digital access and reverse the widening gender gap.\n- Climate‑resilient infrastructure example:\n  - Mozambique’s Beira Port was operational within days after two consecutive cyclones due to extensive drainage systems and well‑constructed buildings and roads.\n- Energy diversification:\n  - One‑fifth of sub‑Saharan Africa’s electricity is generated from hydropower—which is susceptible to droughts—so countries need greater efforts to diversify electricity sources over the long run to solar and wind.\n  - Kenya example: government increased access to electricity from 40 to 70 percent of the population largely through small, off‑grid, solar‑powered energy plants using a pay‑as‑you‑go, mobile money model; this created 10 times more jobs than in traditional utilities.\n- Co‑benefits: Renewable deployment reduces carbon emissions, spreads electrification, and creates jobs."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Strengthening coping mechanisms (social protection and finance)",
      "content": "- Role of buffers:\n  - Social assistance and access to finance act as buffers after shocks, allowing households to smooth consumption and businesses to continue operating.\n- Examples:\n  - Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program provides emergency cash transfers to food‑insecure households and improves financial inclusion by requiring recipients to use bank accounts.\n  - Togo’s “NOVISSI” social protection program uses mobile money and electronic cash transfers to support informal sector workers impacted by COVID‑19.\n- Financial inclusion and digitalization:\n  - Broadening access to finance for low‑income households and small businesses helps coping, investment in health and education, and business investment.\n  - Where digitalization supports better policy design and outcomes, it can be a win‑win."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Costs, constraints, and policy priorities",
      "content": "- Cost magnitude: Achieving resilience will be expensive; precise estimation is difficult given complementarities, but it will certainly be in the hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.\n- Fiscal constraints: COVID‑19 is straining already limited fiscal space; most countries’ public debts were increasing rapidly even before the crisis.\n- Required reforms and actions:\n  - Transformative reforms are required to eliminate policy‑induced distortions that stymie private investment and to improve public finance management systems.\n  - More domestic revenue mobilization will be imperative; digitalization can help improve the efficiency of tax collection.\n  - Support from the international community is vital: stepped‑up debt relief, financing, and capacity development are needed.\n- IMF role: The IMF is supporting the recovery in sub‑Saharan Africa through debt relief, financing, and capacity development and intends to do more in the years ahead.\n- Final rationale: Investing in resilience is more cost‑effective than repeated rebuilding after crises and should be the metric of success to encourage a more virtuous cycle and resilient development path for the region.\n\nCharting a Path for a Resilient Recovery in Sub Saharan Africa, Kristalina Georgieva and Abebe Aemro Selassie; September 15, 2020.\n\n---\n\n Content in this bundle\n\n- Chapter 3\n  - Chapter 3 (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - Chapter 3 (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n\n---\n\n References\n\n- Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa\n- access to enough safe and nutritious food\n- through all three of those channels\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2020/09/15/blog-charting-a-path-for-a-resilient-recovery-in-sub-saharan-africa"
    }
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    "Authors: Kristalina Georgieva, Abebe Aemro Selassie",
    "Published: September 15, 2020",
    "Authors and date: Kristalina Georgieva, Abebe Aemro Selassie; September 15, 2020.",
    "Core message: The COVID‑19 crisis presents an opportunity to use fiscal support to build a smarter, greener and more equitable future in sub‑Saharan Africa by prioritizing resilience to increasingly frequent climate‑related and other shocks.",
    "Regional vulnerability highlighted: sub‑Saharan Africa is especially vulnerable to climate‑related shocks because of heavy dependence on rain‑fed agriculture and limited adaptive capacity.",
    "Finding: Over the medium term, annual per capita economic growth can decline an additional 1 percentage point with each drought.",
    "Comparative impact: That impact is eight times worse than for an emerging market or developing economy in other parts of the world.",
    "Digital expansion potential: Expanding internet access in sub‑Saharan Africa by 10 percent of the population could increase real per capita GDP growth by as much as 4 percentage points.",
    "Broader effects: A recovery that raises resilience will translate into higher living standards, better‑quality jobs, and more opportunity.",
    "Health and nutrition:",
    "Digital and technological adoption:",
    "Labor market and gender impacts:",
    "Policy implication: Invest in building digital skills to create new, better jobs and to spread the benefits of digital integration.",
    "Need for targeted infrastructure investment:",
    "Connectivity status:",
    "Climate‑resilient infrastructure example:",
    "Energy diversification:",
    "Co‑benefits: Renewable deployment reduces carbon emissions, spreads electrification, and creates jobs.",
    "Role of buffers:",
    "Examples:",
    "Financial inclusion and digitalization:",
    "Cost magnitude: Achieving resilience will be expensive; precise estimation is difficult given complementarities, but it will certainly be in the hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.",
    "Fiscal constraints: COVID‑19 is straining already limited fiscal space; most countries’ public debts were increasing rapidly even before the crisis.",
    "Required reforms and actions:",
    "IMF role: The IMF is supporting the recovery in sub‑Saharan Africa through debt relief, financing, and capacity development and intends to do more in the years ahead.",
    "Final rationale: Investing in resilience is more cost‑effective than repeated rebuilding after crises and should be the metric of success to encourage a more virtuous cycle and resilient development path for the region.",
    "**Chapter 3**",
    "[Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/SSA/Issues/2020/04/01/sreo0420)",
    "[access to enough safe and nutritious food](https://blogs.imf.org/2020/06/04/safeguarding-africas-food-security-in-the-age-of-covid-19/)",
    "[through all three of those channels](https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid19/COVID-Lending-Tracker)"
  ],
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