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Africa and thefinancial crisis:An agendafor actionStatement to the 2009 MinisterialRoundtable of the AfricanDevelopment BankTunis, Tunisia, 12 May 2009Although the financial crisis was triggered by events in the advancedcountries, its impact is being felt in all developing countries.The crisis has imperilled recent improvements in African economiesand compounded the deleterious effects of last year’s foodand energy crisis.It is now evident that initial sanguine views that the crisis would havelimited impact on Africa because our financial systems were less integratedinto global financial markets were wrong. The spread of thecrisis from the financial sector to the real sector in developed andemerging economies soon made it clear that Africa would feel itsnegative impact. This is now clearly evident from the slowdown ofgrowth, weakening currencies, reduced investment flows, decliningstock market indices, sharply reduced commodity exports, remittancesand tourism receipts.We are now fully conscious of these negative developments but itremains essential to capture the specific impact of the crisis on individualcountries and sub-regions. It is only by gaining a full empiricalappreciation of the extent of the crisis that we can make the rightpolicy choices. This is why the theme of this Roundtable – Africa andthe Financial Crisis: an Agenda for Action - is especially relevant. Itcertainly points to a need for us to begin to pay close attention towhat the crisis portends for Africa going forward into the future.Integrating Africa201