Over the next decade, African countries are expected to be the largest beneficiaries of increased donor aid, which is intended to improve their prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This handbook will help these countries assess the macroeconomic implications of increased aid and respond to the associated policy challenges. The handbook is directed at policymakers, practicing economists in African countries, and the staffs of international financial institutions and donor agencies who participate in preparing medium-term strategies for African countries, including in the context of poverty reduction strategy papers. It provides five main guidelines for developing scaling-up scenarios to help countries identify important policy issues involved in using higher aid flows effectively: to absorb as much aid as possible, to boost growth in the short to medium term, to promote good governance and reduce corruption, to prepare an exit strategy should aid levels decrease, and to regularly reassess the policy mix.

Over the next decade, African countries are expected to be the largest beneficiaries of increased donor aid, which is intended to improve their prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This handbook will help these countries assess the macroeconomic implications of increased aid and respond to the associated policy challenges. The handbook is directed at policymakers, practicing economists in African countries, and the staffs of international financial institutions and donor agencies who participate in preparing medium-term strategies for African countries, including in the context of poverty reduction strategy papers. It provides five main guidelines for developing scaling-up scenarios to help countries identify important policy issues involved in using higher aid flows effectively: to absorb as much aid as possible, to boost growth in the short to medium term, to promote good governance and reduce corruption, to prepare an exit strategy should aid levels decrease, and to regularly reassess the policy mix.

Over the next decade, African countries are expected to be the largest beneficiaries of increased donor aid, which is intended to improve their prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This handbook will help these countries assess the macroeconomic implications of increased aid and respond to the associated policy challenges. the handbook is directed at policymakers, practicing economists in African countries, and the staffs of international financial institutions and donor agencies who participate in preparing medium-term strategies for African countries, including in the context of poverty reduction strategy papers. It provides five main guidelines for developing scaling-up scenarios to help countries identify important policy issues involved in using higher aid flows effectively: to absorb as much aid as possible, to boost growth in the short to medium term, to promote good governance and reduce corruption, to prepare an exit strategy should aid levels decrease, and to regularly reassess the policy mix.

In September 2007, the UN Secretary General launched the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Africa Steering and Working Groups. The Steering Group brings together the leaders of multilateral institutions to identify practical steps needed for Africa to achieve the MDGs. The Managing Director of the IMF is a member of the Steering Group. The Working Group supports the Steering Group and is comprised of thematic groups in education, agriculture, health, infrastructure and trade facilitation, statistics, aid predictability, and MDG operationalization at the country level. The following three notes assess the macroeconomic implications of the spending of scaled-up aid to Benin, Niger, and Togo in line with that promised by the G-8 at Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005.

The pace of progress toward achievement of the Millenium Development Goals (MDG) in many sub-Saharan African countries remains too slow to reach targets by 2015, despite significant progress in the late 1990s. The MDG Africa Steering Group, convened in September 2007 by the UN Secretary-General, designated 10 countries for pilot studies to investigate how existing national development plans would be impacted by scaled up development aid to Africa. This joint publication of the IMF and the United Nations Development Programme reports conclusions drawn from these pilot studies and summarizes country-specific results for Benin, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Liberia, Niger, Rwanda, Tanzania, Togo, Sierra Leone, and Zambia.

This paper outlines the challenge of developing an operational macroeconomic framework in Ethiopia consistent with the large envisaged scaling up of aid to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This paper describes an MDG scenario that addresses both microeconomic and macroeconomic constraints, such as the need to boost sustainable growth, limit Dutch disease, formulate an exit strategy from aid dependency, enhance public financial management (PFM), and expand the supply of skilled labor. The paper will argue that a carefully sequenced MDG strategy is essential so that the scaled-up aid and public spending will remain in line with Ethiopia's absorptive capacity.

Mozambique is an economic success story in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Its remarkable achievements offer valuable lessons to other low-income countries in a post-stabilization economic phase, including how they can efficiently manage a scaling up of foreign aid aimed at poverty reduction. Of special interest to other sub-Saharan countries are the book's discussions of Mozambique's progress toward consolidating macroeconomic and financial stability, and the challenges it faces in ensuring long-term sustainability, creating a virtuous cycle of natural resource use, and implementing second-generation structural reforms to sustain its growth. This book also provides a summary of the most recent research on issues related to post-stabilization economics in SSA.

Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world's poorest countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been strongly affected by the global recession, despite initial optimism that the global financial system would have few spillover effects on the continent. Contents of this report: (1) Recent Develop.; (2) Congressional Interest; (3) African Economies; Trends Prior to the Crisis; Develop. Challenges; (4) How the Crisis is Affecting Africa: Internat. Trade: Trade with the U.S., and with China; Capital Flows: Migrant Remittances; Foreign Aid; (5) Implications of the Crisis in Africa; Sub-Regional Variations; Fiscal and Trade Balances; Poverty Reduction; Food Security; Political Stability; (6) Internat. Efforts to Address the Impact of the Crisis on Africa; Developed Countries; Internat. Financial Inst.; World Bank; ADB; IMF; African Gov¿ts.