Post offices, savings and credit cooperatives, rural banks, and microfinance institutions have an important role in Remittances services

Recorded remittances into Africa, grew fourfold between 1990 and 2010 to reach nearly $40 billion in 2010. These funds are the continent’s largest source of foreign capital after foreign direct investments. Recent surveys show that investments such as land purchases, building a home, and starting a business were the highest uses of remittances sent home by the African diaspora.

However, official remittance flows to Africa are significantly underestimated, as only about half of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa collect and report remittance data with any regularity.

It is still very expensive to send remittances to African countries, particularly within Africa. These high remittance costs encourage the use of informal channels and are an unnecessary burden for African migrants and remittance recipients.

Recent recommendations by the African Development Bank and the World Bank indicate organizations with large branch networks, such as post offices, savings and credit cooperatives, rural banks, and microfinance institutions can play an important role to expand access to remittances and other financial services among the poor and in rural communities.

Factors such as exclusive agreements with money transfer operators, which limits competition and tends to increase the cost of sending money should be avoided. The impact and other implications of telecom companies in Africa who offer mobile money transfers and other financial services need to be assessed for banking stability and systemic risk.

Countries from which African migrant workers send money are of course worldwide. Top destinations for African migrants are France (9% of total emigrants), Cote d’Ivoire (8%), South Africa (6%), Saudi Arabia (5%), and the United States and the United Kingdom (4% each).

Citadel Advantage runs a two day intensive course on Payments, Remittances and Opportunities. This course is the definitive A to Z on Remittances – from informal systems to the revolutionary appearance of the Mobile Phone as a remittance tool including an in-depth case study of Kenya’s world standard setting M-PESA system.

The course is intended for any organization in the payments and remittances space – banks, post offices, credit unions, microlenders, development agencies etc.

Where can you catch these courses?

• London on 16 & 17 May 2011
• Johannesburg on 22 & 23 June 2011

For course details and a descriptive brochure please e-mail us at courses@citadeladvantage.com

Please do indicate which course you will be interested in – London or Johannesburg.