The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Arab States and Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Growth-Inducing Collaboration

The recent global financial crisis has generated considerable adverse economic repercussions around the world. It has also resulted in acute awareness of the variability of key economic indicators whose correlation with economic growth and population welfare underscores the need to manage risk nationally and internationally. Developing and small economies have proven to be highly vulnerable to economic adversities of a global nature in the absence of coping mechanisms that could take the form of compensation or aid. Arab countries and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) share this vulnerability to varying degrees and can be expected to suffer from it in the future but could, it is argued, reduce their respective levels of exposure through enhanced economic collaboration in trade and investment. The episode of the crisis has revealed that for governments and households the variability of income is as important a concern as its level. Therefore, it is expected that future economic policy will pay more attention to reducing economic risk than was the case in the past.