Remittances to Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan countries which registered a small decline of 0.5 percent to $48 billion in 2019 will deep by 23.1 % in 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis.
The World Bank which made the prediction yesterday says a recovery of 4 percent is expected in 2021.
The anticipated decline can be attributed to a combination of factors driven by the coronavirus outbreak in key destinations where African migrants reside including in the EU area, the United States, the Middle East, and China.
These large economies host a large share of Sub-Saharan African migrants and combined, are a source of close to a quarter of total remittances sent to the region.
In addition to the pandemic’s impact, many countries in the Eastern Africa region are experiencing a severe outbreak of desert locusts attacking crops and threatening the food supply for people in the region. Remittance costs: Sending $200 remittances to the region cost 8.9 percent on average in the first quarter of 2020, a modest decrease compared with the average cost of 9.25 percent a year before.
The most expensive corridors are observed mainly in the Southern African region, with costs as high as 20 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, the less expensive corridors had average costs of less than 3.6 percent.
