THELOGICALINDIAN - According to allegation from the Continental Migration Report 2024 remittances to African countries are projected to abatement from the 44 billion recorded in 2024 to 41 billion
The Covid Effect
As expected, the Covid-19 communicable is articular as one of the basic causes of the decline. However, admitting this projected 5.4 per cent drop, a address by Africa News explains that remittances are now assuming “greater animation and believability as a antecedent of basic in Africa than adopted absolute advance flows.”
Consequently, the Continental Migration Report 2024, which was produced by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in affiliation with the African Union Commission (AUC), “recommends that governments beyond the apple should booty able activity to facilitate and addition remittances in appearance of acknowledging the action adjoin COVID-19.”
In accession to the pandemic, remittances to Africa abide to be bedfast by aerial sending costs, the address noted. For instance, back sending $200 to the continent, the sender will acquire an boilerplate amount that is agnate to eight percent of the amount sent. This boilerplate sending cost, according to the report, is over bristles allotment credibility college than the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 10 ambition of three percent.
Lowering the Cost of Remittances
However, as the address notes, some African countries accept taken accomplish to lower the costs of remittance transfers. Some of the accomplish taken accommodate “relaxed adopted barter controls to acquiesce for cyberbanking and adaptable money transfers at bargain costs.”
The Continental Migration Report 2024, for its part, recommends that affiliate States abutment migrants and their families through the acceptance of laws and regulations to facilitate the sending and accepting of remittances. This can be done by “fostering antagonism amid banks and added remittance administration agencies with a appearance to authorize bargain alteration mechanisms.”
As expected, the address praises agenda alteration solutions such as Mpesa, the adaptable phone-based money alteration service, but makes no acknowledgment of crypto-based solutions.
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