Unless shocks are purely temporary and can be financed, which does not apply to the current shocks facing the continent, some form of adjustment to deteriorating external terms of trade and/or a tightening of access to external finance is unavoidable. This adjustment will be less contractionary for the economy as whole if the real exchange rate depreciates.
An argument sometimes advanced to oppose exchange rate flexibility is that nominal depreciation will drive up domestic inflation, imposing hardship on the population and obviating any real depreciation. But the experience of several African countries, with flexible exchange rates and monetary policies which focus on controlling domestic inflation, does not  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  support this pessimism.