Multimedia

External event

Conference

Promoting Financial Integration in Africa

Organisers: Banque de France and Fondation pour les études et recherches sur le développement international (FERDI).

The process of financial integration consists in strengthening the links between national financial systems to create a broader financial space offering a wider choice of funding and investment opportunities. Concerning both the banking system and financial markets, financial integration allows economies of scale and enhances competition. It provides better access to financial services and, generally, reduces their costs as well as allowing the allocation of capital towards the most profitable projects. Financial integration is thus an instrument of financial development which itself favours economic growth.

In this perspective, the implementation of financial integration policies raises a number of issues: a) how to make institutional integration, i.e. the adoption of common rules and instruments, translate into a de facto integration via an intensification of financial flows between countries? b) how to coordinate financial integration with other dimensions of integration –monetary, commercial and economic – in order to increase its benefits? c) how to cope with new risks associated with the increase in regional financial flows, and particularly, the risk of financial crisis contagion? and d) how to articulate Africa’s, regional financial integration with global financial integration?

The aim of the conference is to generate recommendations on how to promote financial integration in Africa, by combining recent academic findings on this topic with the experience of practitioners from both the public and the private sector.