I will focus on three important issues: •  Is the international response well tailored to the different requirements of the African countries? •  Is the response commensurate to the challenges faced by the countries? •  What additional measures should be considered by the MDBs to increase access to finance?
The basic contours of the global financial crisis are by now well known. Mr. Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board called it a “once in a century tsunami”, born of a collapse deep inside the US housing sector and cascaded outwards leading to instability in financial markets and near stagnation of the real economy, and more recently, a recession.