Here’s how African central banks are tackling coronavirus’s impact

JOHANNESBURG – African central banks have joined the global wave of emergency meetings and unusual measures to cushion their economies against the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
While many of the central banks in the region target inflation and have to prop up volatile currencies, they’ve also used non-traditional policy tools in addition to aggressively cutting interest rates to salvage economic growth and encourage more lending to consumers and businesses.
Lockdowns have brought economic activity to a halt in many African countries, leaving deserted the streets of the commercial hubs of Lagos in Nigeria and Johannesburg in South Africa, suspending exports to try and maintain domestic food supplies and stopping travel. That means the impact of the coronavirus is transmitted to African economies much faster than during the global financial crisis, when they were largely affected through external channels, said Razia Khan, chief economist for Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered Bank.

Source: iol.co.za