Author Description

Remittances represent an important tool for economic growth and poverty alleviation by ensuring a flow of financial resources from migrants and diasporas to households and communities in origin countries. Remittances can potentially be particularly significant as a connection between diasporas and communities of origin, a resource for development and a means to respond to and recover from crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. With this in mind, this report examines the sources, scale and significance of international remittances for Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia over time and in the context of COVID-19. It also discusses, to the extent that it is possible with currently available data, remittances in Libya. In doing so, the report highlights how these North African countries are quite distinct from one another in terms of the sources, scale and significance of their remittances. This potentially has implications for the way that remittances impact on development and poverty alleviation in each receiving country and the way that policies should be shaped to accommodate and respond to their differences.