Keywords: global crisis, Africa, finance, banks, budget deficit

L. L. FITUNI

Doctor of Economics

Over the past couple of years, many scientific articles and even "express monographs" about the global financial and economic crisis have been published all over the world. Most of these publications were of a predictive nature. The authors tried to predict what will happen in a year or two, how the crisis will affect the global economy in general and developing countries in particular. The reader was fascinated by the apocalyptic notes that were dominant in many predictions. The crisis was described as "unprecedented", "the deepest since the Great Depression", and even as "a turning point in the development of the world economy".

Today, more than two years after the crisis began, it is becoming clear that analysts have often exaggerated the catastrophic nature of the crisis.

WAS THERE A CRISIS?

Indeed, the depth of decline in financial indicators is impressive. However, the reduction in real production levels, although obvious and significant, looks much more modest. Moreover, a timely departure from liberal-market fundamentalism allowed the authorities of the world's leading economies to quickly turn on the levers of state regulation and seriously mitigate, and in some places shorten, the most acute phase of the crisis.

Such a rapid transition to a phase of relative stabilization and albeit uncertain, but growth, by itself reduced the political relevance of anti-banking murmurings in the world and the escalated rhetoric about the need to restructure the global model of economic relations. The latter has been sharply criticized since the beginning of the crisis. A whole system of inter-state negotiations and consultations was launched regarding the restructuring of the global financial architecture (including the redistribution of votes in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and attempts to find a replacement for the dollar as the world's reserve currency), global regulation of financial markets, and even the introduction of a worldwide tax on certain bank operations.

At one point, it seemed that the combined efforts of young growing economies, primarily China, India, Brazil and Russia, which joined them, would make all this possible. However, the miracle did not happen. Moreover, the mighty China suddenly appeared much more circumspect and cautious in its actions than expected by analysts from the north and northwest. Having strengthened its position in the global economy and finance as much as it considered desirable and achievable at this stage, Beijing chose "not to rock the boat further" in vain. Proposals for the introduction of a new world reserve currency were slowly silenced. The Chinese authorities, having made harsh public statements to the contrary, in fact still did not ignore the demands of the West about the need to correct the yuan exchange rate, taking into account the situation of China's partners in international trade.

In short, the crisis, although it stirred up the deep processes of transformation of the global economic model, clearly did not bring the situation to the limits of real restructuring of the latter.

THRIVING IN POVERTY

Against this background, the results of the impact of the crisis on the African economy are very interesting and revealing. This interest is primarily due to the ambiguous situation that has developed on the continent due to the vicissitudes of the rampant global financial and economic disaster, and the uniqueness of the African phenomenon of "prosperity in poverty". Unlike other developing Asian and Latin American regions, Tropical African economies continued to grow throughout 2008 and into 2009, and the region as a whole managed to avoid a major recession, at least in the real sector.

In 2009, the journal published a number of articles on the possible consequences of the crisis for African countries, including a large predictive collective article in No. 5, which the author of these lines also participated in writing.

The article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Natural Sciences in the framework of the project "Emerging images and real opportunities of Russian-African" raw material interaction "in a multipolar world", N 09-02-00547a.

It is gratifying to know that a number of the assumptions expressed in these publications, which at that time were based more on the intuition of Russian Africanists than on numbers (they simply did not exist at our disposal yet), turned out to be correct. However, it seems that we tended to overestimate the severity of the impact of the crisis on Africa at that time.

I would like to suggest a clear division of the results (so far preliminary) of the crisis into two groups: the consequences for the financial sector and for the real sector of the African economy. This forced dichotomy is a specific feature of African reality. The objective division of a single economic whole is both a misfortune for the African economy and, possibly, its salvation in the global crisis.

THE TOPIC IS FORGOTTEN, BUT NOT FORBIDDEN

For some reason, the question of how the current crisis has affected the financial sphere of African states has been out of the focus of both Russian and foreign scientific literature. However, it is in this area that the impact of the crisis on Africa should be most significant. After all, unlike Russian researchers, who mostly write about the systemic global economic crisis, almost the rest of the world calls it the global financial crisis, which caused a recession in a large number of (primarily highly developed) countries.

So, if this is a financial crisis, then it would be natural to expect that in Africa its impact is most visible in the monetary, credit and budgetary areas. But is it true? For some reason, the world's scientific and business press generally ignores this issue in silence.

Apart from the oft - repeated prophecy that the crisis "may reduce the amount of development aid coming from the West," no meaningful predictions or generalizations were made, either at the height of the crisis or after its worst phase. A beautifully published volume with the pretentious title "African Finance in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Crisis and Beyond", which appeared in mid-^January 2010.1 was actually a collection of speeches at the IMF seminar of the same name, held in Tunis. However, this forum was held at the very beginning of 2008, that is, when the wave of the financial crisis had not yet reached Africa, and the articles included in the collection were almost not subjected to"conjunctural editing". The promising title was just a well-calculated marketing ploy by the publishers. In fact, there has been no in-depth research on African finance during the crisis. What's the big deal?

In our opinion, such a modest attention paid to the problems of African finance is due to the fact that the role of the latter in the global financial system is very modest. They do not have an active impact on global financial processes, and therefore are largely indifferent to the global business press. If they are mentioned at all, it is only in two contexts-external aid and debt burden.

However, the situation changes dramatically if you look at the problem not from the point of view of an external observer, but from the point of view of Africans themselves. For them, the problems of the financial sector are a concentrated expression of the problem of development. After all, the desired breakthrough from the state of backwardness is primarily a matter of financing and implementing programs to modernize African economies.

PERIPHERAL FINANCE

Africa's finances are considered the periphery of the global financial system. Perhaps it is. But this periphery is an organic and integral part of the global economy and global finance. It is connected to the center (transnational financial structures in the USA, EU, Japan) by billions of mutually feeding threads of vessels and indirect influences, sometimes not quite distinguishable by the naked eye.

Let's try to answer the question: how did the global financial and economic crisis affect the financial sector in Africa, and what are the possible scenarios for its post-crisis development in the near and medium term?

As you know, finance, according to the definition , is an economic relationship carried out mainly in monetary form between the main economic entities-enterprises, households and the state. Financial resources are understood as a quantitative characteristic of the financial result of the reproduction process for a certain period.

In addition, in relation to states, it is customary to talk about the financial system - a single complex of financial relations management, including a mechanism for forming funds of centralized and decentralized financial resources, state (municipal) financial authorities and financial services of enterprises, as well as a system of interrelations between them.

In relation to the analysis of the national economy, the concept of the financial sector is often used. The latter includes the entire set of financial institutions, instruments and regulatory norms operating in a given economy that ensure the implementation of monetary and payment relations in the economy. It unites banking and non-bank credit institutions, other financial intermediaries, and organized and unorganized financial markets.

Africa's financial sector, both before and after the crisis, has three fundamental characteristics:

weak development of financial institutions; compactness and modest turnover; increased importance of informal structures and relationships. If you describe it in professional terms, you can also talk about the" lack of depth " of the financial sector, its low efficiency and low availability of financial services to the main economic actors.

From the point of view of macroeconomics, all of the above can easily be explained by the low income level of the main part of the population (including small and even medium-sized African entrepreneurs), the underdevelopment of farms in general and financial relations in particular, and the economic environment that is unfavorable for the development of entrepreneurship and competition.

SMALL BUT VERY PROFITABLE BANKING SECTOR

Financial intermediation (which, from the point of view of economic theory, is what credit institutions do) is less developed in Africa than in other regions of the world. But, as in the rest of the world, the banking sector is at the heart of Africa's finances. Since the mid-1990s, under the conditions of forced and externally pushed liberalization of domestic financial markets, it has been growing at a very rapid rate in terms of quantity. Rating agencies generally record an increase in the quality of African banks ' performance in terms of compliance with international standards and strengthening their financial positions (see table 1).

Table 1

Best Emerging Market Banks in Africa in 2010 (according to Global Finance magazine)

Source: Global Finance Magazine. L., 2010, May.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a significant diversification of banks in terms of ownership forms and national ownership of the majority stake. Africa currently presents a rather mixed picture in this regard (see table 2).

At the same time, national private banking capital is almost universally weak. The share of private banks in the total volume of loans provided to the population from all countries of the continent is most significant in South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles and Cape Verde.

However, with the growth in the number of credit institutions, some modernization of the banking system and an increase in the share of private capital in it, its stability was practically not strengthened. The average African bank is characterized by the following parameters. The average value of assets in 2008 (based on the countries listed in table 2) was $81 million (the global average outside of Africa is $334 million). Being generally small structures, they operate with clearly inflated costs compared to the global average. It is estimated that the overhead costs of African banks are almost 50% higher than those outside the continent. At the same time, the bank margin (the difference in the prices at which banks attract and provide their various services, including interest on borrowing and lending) for African banks is on average 70% wider than in the rest of the world. In this way, they partially compensate for their inflated costs, but the net profit rate of African bankers is very high.

Table 2

Grouping of Tropical African countries by type of ownership in the banking sector

However, it is inferior to Russian indicators.

Although, as we noted above, African finance is the periphery of the global financial system, it should be noted that investing in this periphery in the years leading up to the financial crisis was very profitable. Despite the region's poverty and regular complaints from African financiers about government corruption and administrative oppression, overall returns on investment are higher than the global average. Speaking about this and understanding the full depth of differences, it is impossible, again, not to see parallels with the Russian reality.

The following observation is also interesting (supported by figures in Table 3), which characterizes the degree of attractiveness of the African financial sector as an investment object. Serious statistics on the global average do not reveal a significant difference in the profitability of banking institutions, depending on their nationality and form of ownership. However, in Africa, foreign-owned banking structures are more profitable than foreign-owned banks in any other part of the world, on the one hand, and also more profitable than banks owned by local capital, on the other.

Table 3

Comparative banking profitability in Africa and beyond (2000-2007)

Table 3 shows the level of return on invested capital for a sample of banks operating simultaneously in Africa and other regions of the world. For completeness:-

we bring profitability to the value of all assets in general and only on the invested capital.

As for financial intermediaries of the non-deposit type-insurance companies, pension funds, investment funds, etc., this segment of the financial sector is much worse developed in Africa than the banking sector. Moreover, the penetration rate of insurance services (the ratio of the sum of all insurance premiums to GDP) has even degraded in the former English colonies compared to colonial times. In most countries today, it is below 1%.

This is not surprising. First, during their rule, the British enforced insurance in the colonies through tax levers. Second, the three main characteristics of modern African economies - low incomes, high inflation, and poor contractual relationships-are simultaneously the main enemies of the insurance and pension businesses. To add to the bleak picture, we can also mention the underdeveloped regulation of the insurance and pension markets in Africa and their extremely weak infrastructure.

Due to the deregulation of the insurance and pension markets, public and private pension insurance systems exist side by side on the continent. But almost everywhere private business is at the stage of primary capital accumulation. Hence the enslaving terms of contracts, outright fraud, non-compliance with contractual obligations, and much more, with which the development of a reliable insurance and pension business is incompatible.

Summary quantitative data, especially recent ones, on the development of this segment is extremely difficult to find, but the table 4 below generally gives an idea of its current state.

Table 4

Portfolio structure of insurance and pension companies in a number of Tropical African countries

Explanations to the table: NFSS - national social insurance fund (system); PPF - public (state) pension fund; CSF - life insurance companies; CHSC - private general insurance companies.

Africa's financial markets, with a few exceptions, are in their infancy. Organized securities markets exist in less than half of the continent's countries, and only in South Africa have they reached a certain maturity.

On the eve of the crisis, the Johannesburg Exchange in South Africa ($600 billion) was the fourth most important emerging market in the world in terms of annual turnover (after South Korea, Russia and India). At the same time, the South African stock market is not large enough to serve as an initial listing site for some of the largest South African companies on a global scale. 21 leading corporations in South Africa have opted for listings on foreign exchanges. Among these corporations are mining company Anglo American, banking group Investec, brewery SAB-Miller, insurance giant Old Mutual and innovative technology company Dimension Data (all of which have an initial listing in London).

Prior to the crisis, there were 15 stock exchanges operating in Africa, and several others were in various stages of preparing to launch national organized securities markets projects. In an intermediate state were Gabon and Cameroon, where exchanges have already been formally established, but listings have not yet been formed. A common problem of African exchanges (except South Africa) is their small capitalization, even relative to the scale of national securities markets. In no country in Africa does the capitalization of exchanges exceed 15% of the total capitalization of the entire securities market of the country.

These were the general parameters of the financial sector in Africa on the eve of the crisis. I must say that they have generally changed slightly. To a greater extent, the crisis had a negative impact on the situation with individual financial and economic problems, which significantly worsened the situation in the country.-

by ripping them off and making them search for an antidote. These include the problems of budget deficits and negative balances on current items of the balance of payments, the risk of recurrent debt difficulties and a heavier debt burden, as well as currency and monetary problems. At the same time, the difficulties were compounded, in general, by a rather unexpected and rapid aggravation of the crisis situation. Many governments, obediently following liberal-market recipes, began to notice with displeasure that the reforms carried out were powerless in the face of the global financial element, and overseas tutors, having got into a difficult financial situation, easily abandoned the monetarist formulas and spells that were useless in these conditions. At the same time, some of the pre-emptive measures of previous years were not useless. First of all, we are talking about stabilization and reserve funds, which the IMF experts recommended to create not only for Russia, but also for African countries.

STABLE FUNDS: FROM JOSEPH THE BEAUTIFUL TO THE "WASHINGTON CONSENSUS"

You can't scare the Africans with a crisis. For half a century of independence, the continent has lived out of crisis conditions for only 12-15 years. Residents have learned to adapt to seemingly hopeless economic situations.

In addition, Africa is known to be the cradle of the first anti-crisis solutions and financial and economic innovations in the history of mankind. According to extant written sources, it was in Egypt, almost 4 thousand years ago, that Joseph the Beautiful initiated the creation of the first stabilization fund in world history (at that time grain, in case of famine). Being an effective manager at that time, he managed to push through the project of sequestering part of the crop to the treasury through those close to the Pharaoh. He also managed to break the resistance of the castes of priests and scribes, who had their own business interests and wanted to increase production in fat years, and therefore insisted on including grain from the state stabilization fund in the current turnover to expand crops. The 20% food tax rate introduced by Joseph effectively guaranteed the impossibility of ancient Egyptian farmers to expand real production and create reserves themselves. Despite the incessant criticism of his economic policy from opponents, Joseph ensured the inviolability of the created reserves for all 7 "fat years", which is later when the 7-year global food crisis occurs (7 lean years), obviously, brought both him and the pharaoh superprofits in the sale of real assets that have risen sharply in price to the population. Genesis describes it this way: "And there was a famine throughout all the land; and Joseph opened all the barns, and sold bread to the Egyptians. And the famine increased in the land of Egypt. And from all countries they came to Egypt to buy bread from Joseph, for the famine was severe in all the land."

The result of this crisis, in accordance with economic logic, should have been the concentration of capital and power in the hands of the Center in the person of the head of state (Pharaoh) and his first minister (Joseph), a significant weakening of the economic positions of competing political elites (priests), while maintaining, and possibly strengthening the positions of officials (scribes), without through which economic procedures equivalent to today's tenders for the implementation of state reserves could not be carried out.²

It is also important to note that the initial prerequisite for the implementation of the ancient Egyptian anti-crisis program was the presence of a system of good governance in the country in the form of assistance (special favor) of the Pharaoh to the economic reforms of Joseph. As the subsequent Egyptian history shows, the lack of such good governance on the banks of the Nile after 430 years resulted in the Egyptian executions and the subsequent mass outflow of labor resources and capital flight from the country3.

Today, the reform of Africa's financial systems took place within the framework of the so-called "Washington Consensus"⁴, which continued to dominate the global financial horizon undividedly until the crisis began, and according to which African countries could count on external assistance and favorable economic treatment only if their economic policies implemented the basic requirements of a liberal market model of development*.

In the financial sector, in particular, a significant reduction in the public sector, strict budget discipline and cuts in social spending of the state, opening the domestic market to foreign capital, strict compliance with the validity of the exchange rate policy were required.

THE MODEST CHARM OF THE" FAT YEARS " IN AFRICA

Despite the negative attitude to the recipes of the "Washington Consensus", their positive effect was that almost all African countries that obeyed the prescribed conditions managed to reduce their public debt in 2002-2007.

The tendency to reduce the national debt in the "fat years" was traced very clearly. The main statistical indicator here - the ratio of public debt to GDP - has been improving since the late 1990s. However, its analysis "for Africa as a whole", if not completely devoid of practical meaning, is very conditional. The fact is that, apart from the economic context, this percentage in itself does not say much about whether the country is experiencing difficulties or everything is fine with it. The bare numbers may be similar for countries that are in diametrically opposite economic conditions.

* The impact of implementing the Washintong Consensus principles on the economies of African countries will be discussed in more detail in the next article.

For example, for the highly developed United States, this figure at the end of fiscal 2009 was 83.4% (the total debt of the federal and state governments). In 2011, according to the draft budget, it will reach 101% (of GDP), which is not much less than that of Sudan (104.5% in 2009). The absolute world leader in this indicator in 2009. Still, there was an African country that was experiencing the most acute economic problems of Zimbabwe (304.3%). However, it was followed by the second, albeit by a large margin, prosperous Japan (192.1%) ⁵.

When analyzing the African situation, it is not a static figure that is extremely important, but dynamics. When analyzing the latter, it becomes clear that on average for Sub-Saharan Africa, the indicator under consideration, which reached 46% of GDP in 2000, fell to 10% by 2008. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the spread of values for the continent's poorest countries, burdened with a huge debt burden (and there are 29 of them in Africa), and countries that export expensive natural raw materials is very large. This was because oil-exporting countries managed to reduce their debt levels thanks to the plentiful inflow of petrodollars in the " fat " years leading up to the crisis.

In 2000, the external debt-to-GDP ratio of Nigeria and Gabon was about 60%, but by 2008 it had fallen to 1.5% and 14%, respectively. In Angola, on the eve of the crisis, the figure was 16.8%. Not on the advice of Joseph, but on the recommendation of Western economists, primarily from the IMF, these countries have created stabilization funds. At the end of 2008, the Nigerian Stabilization Fund's reserves reached $18 billion, or 7.5% of GDP. For comparison, we note that the value of the Russian Stabilization Fund at the time of its division on February 1, 2008 was 3852 billion rubles. RUB, or approximately $154 billion. (more than 12% of GDP in 2008).

Table 5

Debt quota (ratio of public debt to GDP, in%) of African countries

For the rest of Africa, the reduction in the debt burden (and with it the indicator in question) was mainly the result of efforts to implement international agreements in the framework of the G8 agreements reached at the Gleneagles Summit in Scotland in June 2005: the MDRI initiative, a multilateral debt reduction initiative. Then it was decided to completely write off the debts of 20 least developed countries in Africa to the World Bank, the IMF, the African Development Bank and other creditors. For the other 9 countries, this process has not yet been completed.

It is noteworthy that the share of external public debt in relation to GDP increased especially strongly (as a percentage of 2007) in the countries that were advertised in the years leading up to the crisis as particularly diligent implementers of the precepts of the "Washington Consensus" - Botswana, Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia. The absolute leader remained Zimbabwe, whose government was headed by M. Tsvangirai since February 2009.,

A Western-backed opponent of President Robert Mugabe. During the year of his leadership of the country's economy, the indicator's value increased by about a third.

At the same time, the" fat years " proved to be the most significant period of capital flight from Africa. According to estimates, the total illegal export of capital in 2000-2008 amounted to more than $437 billion. This is almost 3.5 times more than the total for the previous decade, and 2 times more than for the entire 1980s. In total, for almost four decades - from the beginning of 1970 to the present - about $854 billion has been illegally exported from Africa. These are mainly corruption proceeds, as well as the fruits of financial fraud and unpaid taxes to the state.

Thus, the average annual increase in the volume of illegally exported funds over 30 years was approximately 11.9%. At the same time, we are talking about the most conservative estimates. A more likely figure, reflecting the real state of affairs, experts tend to consider $1.8 trillion. This is many times the amount of official development assistance (ODA) for the same period. But even with conservative estimates, the ratio of illegal exports and inflows of ODA for 1970-2008 is 2: 1.

West and Central Africa are leading the way in sub-regional terms. If we ignore the unequal initial conditions (some countries are richer, others poorer), then there is no fundamental difference between French -, English-or Portuguese-speaking Africa in this sense. There is a steady positive correlation between the overall economic potential of the country, its wealth of natural resources and the size of secretly exported capital. The five leading countries in terms of illegal funds taken out are simultaneously the five largest economies in Africa: Nigeria (from 1970 to 2008 - $89.5 billion was exported), Egypt ($70.5), Algeria ($25.7), Morocco ($25) and South Africa ($24.9 billion).

WHAT HAS THE CRISIS DONE?

When the global economy was plunged into a global crisis because of the "doctor" who wrote the recipe for "financial health", the stabilization funds became a useful reserve that gave African governments some freedom of financial maneuver. The unexpected joy was, however, fleeting. The feeling that African countries that are "disconnected" from the global financial market will be islands of financial stability in the raging sea of crisis began to quickly disappear. For some time, the continent's countries continued to pursue the same financial policies, as if nothing had changed in the world around them. They quietly spent the reserves accumulated over the previous 7 " fat " years, financed development programs launched in fulfillment of their obligations under the "Washington Consensus". Governments have been slow to cut back on spending. They continued to allocate funds to prestigious projects that reflected the success of their policies over the past years.

This was compounded by the traditional diseases of the local style of government and finance management - a high degree of subjectivity in economic decision-making, a focus on the doctrinal dogma of financial theory, rather than on real needs, and an eye for "senior comrades" from international financial organizations and "civilized countries with mature markets". Almost all African leaders have been calling for good governance, which has proved its practical value since the days of the Pharaoh-Joseph the Beautiful political tandem and is now being so actively promoted by the Washington Consensus.

But in fact, little has been implemented. If we add to the above a high degree of corruption and a low level of competence of at least some of the financial decision makers and implementers, we will see a fairly complete picture of the formation of anti-crisis financial policies in some African countries during the crisis.

As a result, the "recovering" financial sector of the continent's countries, as it was recently considered, began to absorb not rich resources of the real sector of the economy, while increasing the overall macroeconomic imbalances. Already at the end of the first two quarters of 2009, the problem of external liquidity again became acute, as if there had never been a "fat" financial seven-year plan before 2008.

The help of international financial institutions, which came rather quickly, and in some cases money infusions from China and Japan, helped individual countries that found themselves in the most difficult situation to avoid a balance of payments crisis.

For countries that are not oil exporters, the impact of the crisis was not so painful, but even here it was not without losses. Budgets were teetering on the edge of deficits due to the fact that in the first half of 2008 there was a sharp increase in world oil and food prices.

To date, African countries have almost exhausted their domestic capacity to deal with budget deficits. Access to external financial resources, despite the broadcast statements of various summits, remains generally limited. Intra-African debt markets are in their infancy. Active appeal to them in the favorable pre-crisis years practically dried up their resources.

As far as international capital markets are concerned, although access to them has been somewhat easier for African countries in recent months, they are also not expected to be used. Only a few of the African countries have sufficiently high credit ratings to make it possible to earn here

funds on favorable terms. Kenya and Zambia, which intended to launch their first Eurobond issues, had to postpone this venture until better times.

Summing up the above, it can be concluded that although the reduction of the debt burden in the pre-crisis years somewhat eased the financial problems of 2008-2009 for African countries, this was not enough to avoid budget problems during the crisis.

In the first half of 2008, soaring oil and food prices worsened the balance of payments of many Sub-Saharan African countries. The only exceptions were oil and gas exporters, but since the second half of 2008, when oil prices collapsed, the situation of the latter began to deteriorate faster than the former. As a result, in 2009, for the first time in the last three years, the current account deficit was recorded in the balance of payments of many Tropical African countries. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the trend of accelerated growth in oil and gas prices was reversed in a very short time. As a result, oil exporters did not have time to take countermeasures. With the exception of South Africa and some countries without natural reserves of high-value raw materials, current account deficits continue to grow, reflecting a decline in export revenues. Growing current account deficits lead to an outflow of the region's foreign exchange reserves.

For the past 5 years, oil and gas exporting countries have been the main currency recipients in Africa. By the time global oil prices suddenly began to plummet, the balance between their external demands and obligations was extremely favorable for them, and this mitigated the impact of lower revenues from the sale of their main export goods on world markets.

By the time the crisis hit them, their foreign exchange reserves were already about a third depleted. It seemed that disaster was imminent and was about to happen. But since the second half of 2009, global oil prices have crept up. Oil exporters once again felt confident in the future, which can not be said about the other four dozen countries of the continent. Their situation has only worsened since then. For about a dozen African countries, the currency situation has reached an extreme degree of danger. So far, foreign currency reserves exceed the minimum values prescribed by prudential standards (the equivalent of covering the cost of three months of a country's imports), and they are able to fit in with the standards due to lower oil and food prices in 2008. But this is only the effect of delayed financial reporting.

conclusions

Even during the general euphoria of perestroika and reforms in our country, the author of these lines tried to prove in the press that the processes of globalization, which was so welcomed at that time, carry not only a positive, but also a significant destructive charge. This is especially true for countries with small or insufficiently balanced economies that are highly dependent on global market conditions. Therefore, it is extremely important to realize our desire to "enter the world community" and "integrate" into the world market, not to forget about the need to form adequate checks and balances within the national economy, which could compensate for the negative consequences of the blows of an unmanageable (and sometimes externally controlled) global economic element in the event of a sharp deterioration in external conditions.

The crisis has confirmed the importance of diversifying the economic base. It has also created conditions for stimulating progress through structural reforms in the development of the private sector, financial sector, labor market and social protection systems, as well as deepening regional integration.

The damage to the African economy has been considerable (although not as great as initially expected, but apparently lasting), which cannot be minimized without the support of the international community and the creation of new partnership systems for development. Intra-African initiatives in this direction should be complemented by steps taken by developed countries, including measures such as well-calculated, timely and adequate development assistance.

It is also important to make sure that when defining anti-crisis measures, their scope and plans for restructuring global economic relations, the new financial architecture of the world, the voice of Africans themselves is heard, and the problems of the African continent are not solved as something separate, but integrated with the overall course of transformation of global financial systems and international monetary and credit relations.

(To be continued)

¹ African Finance in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, L. - N.Y., 2010. 176 p.

² Those who wish to get acquainted with the anti-crisis program of Joseph the Beautiful independently from the original source in the Russian translation, we refer to the biblical Book of Genesis, chapter 41, verses 1-57, or in the original language to the text of the Torah - the first fifty-seven verses of the book "Mikets".

³ The Bible. The Book of Exodus, chapter 12, verses 35-38.

⁴ "Washington Consensus" is a conventional name for a certain type of macroeconomic policy that a number of economists of international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank) recommend for use in countries experiencing financial and economic crisis.

⁵ Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2011-www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/hist.html; www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html

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