Date: 25 March, 2017

Venue: King Fahd Hotel. C01

Time: 10:00 –  12:00

Background:

An estimated $66 billion in remittances were sent home by over 30 million African migrants in 2015. It is believed, however, that data on African remittance flows are substantially understated due to the large scale use of unregulated channels by migrants in a bid to avoid high transfer costs. In fact, remittances to and within the continent remain the most expensive in the world by a substantial margin. The need to promote cheaper, safer, faster and legally-compliant transfers of remittances has become a global common interest. The target is to reduce transfer costs to less than 3% and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5% by 20130.

In this regard, the African Institute for Remittances (AIR), a Specialized Technical Office of the African Union Commission, has been working towards improving remittances data measurement, compiling and reporting capabilities of Member States, promoting reform of policies and regulatory frameworks on remittances to ensure market competition and efficiency resulting in reduction of remittance transfer costs as well as facilitating ways of leveraging the potential impact of remittances on social and economic development in the continent.

Objectives:

The objectives of the side event include:

• Create awareness on the overall Technical Assistance (TA) Program of AIR
• Present major findings of the baseline assessment conducted in selected AU Member States
• Identify actions/strategies in improving remittance market transparency
• Highlight latest developments in Remittances and share the analysis report from Send Money Africa (SMA) based on the data collected in 2016

Target audience

-          Ministers of Finance, Economic Planning and Integration,

-          Central Bank Governors

-          Senior officials from the African Union Commission

-          Representatives of continental banks, the private sector and other developmment partners.

Date and Venue: 25^th March 2017, King Faad Hotel, Dakar, Senegal.

Further Information:

Further information is available from: AIR@au-air.org; Secretariat@au-air.org; kinfeh@africa-union.org; ousmane.diop@au-air.org