Description
The flow of money sent back home by migrant workers regularly exceeds foreign direct investments and often rivals the amounts given through international aid. This volume presents studies of remittance service providers in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, along with analysis of two migrant destination countries: France and the United Kingdom. Along with areas of remittance services needing improvement, such as high transfer costs or insufficient service to rural areas, innovations that could improve efficiency and facilitate the flow of money are also considered. Mohapatra and Ratha, are both economists at the World Bank. No index is provided. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Remittances sent by African migrants have become an important source of external finance for countries in the Sub-Saharan African region. In many African countries, these flows are larger than foreign direct investment and portfolio debt and equity flows. In some cases, they are similar in size to official aid from multilateral and bilateral donors. Remittance markets in Africa, however, remain less developed than other regions. The share of informal or unrecorded remittances is among the highest for Sub-Saharan African countries. Remittance costs tend to be significantly higher in Africa both for sending remittances from outside the region and for within-Africa (South-South) remittance corridors. At the same time, the remittance landscape in Africa is rapidly changing with the introduction of new remittance technologies, in particular mobile money transfers and branchless banking. This book presents findings of surveys of remittance service providers conducted in eight Sub-Saharan African countries and in three key destination countries. It looks at issues relating to costs, competition, innovation and regulation, and discusses policy options for leveraging remittances for development in Africa.
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