Challenges Of Globalization In Africa

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Remarks by Stanley Fischer First Deputy Managing Director International Monetary Fund at the France-Africa Summit Yaoundé, Cameroon January 19, 2001 President Biya, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: Thank you very much for the invitation to participate, on behalf of the International Monetary Fund, in this conference on globalization. It is a pleasure and an honor to be here. But I must confess to a certain difficulty in speaking on the second day of the conference, for almost everything that should be said has already been said, especially in the excellent speeches at the opening session. Nonetheless, let me try to give a perspective from the IMF, starting with a few general points. First, globalization is multi-faceted, with many important dimensions - economic and social, political and environmental, cultural and religious - which affect everyone in some way. Its implications range from the trade and investment flows that interest economists, to changes that we see in our everyday lives: the ease with which we can talk to people all over the world; the ease and speed with which data can be transmitted around the world; the ease of travel; the ease with which we can see and hear news and cultural events around the world; and most extraordinarily, the internet, which gives us the ability to access the stores of knowledge in virtually all the world's computers. Equally remarkable, as was said yesterday, internet technology is not particularly expensive or capital intensive - but it is human capital intensive, and therein lies one of the implications of globalization for economic and social policy. Second, globalization is not new. Economic globalization is as old as history, a reflection of the human drive to seek new horizons; globalization has usually advanced, though it has sometimes receded - most importantly, during the 1930s, the prelude

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