During these six stages, African governments and central banks will have to work towards harmonisation and coordination of macroeconomic and monetary policies, the harmonising of interconnected payment and clearing systems, the strengthening and harmonisation of banking and financial supervision and the observance of increasingly strict macroeconomic convergence criteria. At the continental level, the Association of African Central Bank Governors subscribes to the AMCP.
Whether this import reduction is sustainable depends on the structural nature of the related economic slump – something we will only know with a sufficient degree of certainty at the beginning of a new cycle. A very interesting aspect of external imbalances is their relation to the patterns of sectoral specialization in a given economy.