Aligning Africa’s Financial System with Sustainable Development: Briefing

Adequate, appropriate finance is crucial for Africa’s sustainable development. Its availability depends on African countries developing financial systems that can effectively draw on and deploy to best use domestic and international, private and public sources. With the growing importance, in particular, of both domestic sources of finance, and private investment (both domestic and international), it is critically important that Africa’s financial and capital markets develop in ways that will promote sustainable development on the continent. Aligning a financial system with sustainable development does not happen automatically. The increasing scale and sophistication of Africa’s financial system alone will not achieve it. Indeed, international evidence amply demonstrates that financial and capital markets can — and often do — become detached and fail to adequately serve the long-term needs of inclusive sustainable development.