Resilience to Shocks and Pathways to Recovery: Perspectives from the Global South, an ERF hybrid event, Marrakech, Morocco

 

 

The event was organized by ERF in collaboration with the IDRC, on the side of the annual meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Morocco in October 2023. It convened about 25-30 participants in a hybrid format that allowed other participants to join online and participate in the discussion.

Objective:  To participate in the global discourse on resilience and the discussion of policy options and coping strategies by developing countries in the face of these challenges, this event is organized to serve as a platform for sharing the findings of the collective research efforts from different regions and to foster cross-fertilization and mutual learning across regions of the world.

The event brought together the contributions of several regional organizations to share knowledge and engage with the wider development community on how to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks drawing on results from the work carried out by partners in these projects.

Session 1 dealt with Debt Sustainability and Economic Resilience, with the participation of the Policy Center for the New South in the moderation and the following Speakers and commentator:

• Ishac Diwan, the Finance for Development Lab
• Ramiro Albrieu, South American Network of Applied Economics, Red Sur
• Mma Ekeruche, Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA) (Online)

Commentator:

• Touhami Abdelkhalek, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University

Mma Ekeruche from the CSEA team in Nigeria presented the severe external debt crisis for African economies, its drivers, skyrocketing interest payments leaving little to key sectors, and presented a proposal for a new debt management based on evidence from their three papers: ‘Effects Of Gender-Inequality During Global Health Emergencies: Evidence from Nigeria’; ‘Debt for Climate and Development Swaps in Nigeria’ and ‘Determining the Optimal Carbon Pricing for Nigeria’

Ramiro Albrieu, senior researcher from Red Sur, was there to present LAC findings and the challenges ahead represented by a future of high interest payments that threaten to crowd out investments in development and green investments.