COVID-19 Africa Watch speaks to Omer Omarabi, the General Manager of Electronic Banking Services Sudan, about how financial technology has played a role in Sudan’s COVID-19 response initiatives.

Key Takeaways

The following are a few of the main takeaways from COVID-19 Africa Watch’s conversation with Omer Omarabi, General Manager of Electronic Banking Services Sudan:

• COVID-19 responses must do two things at once: ensure physical safety of workers and ensure the continuity of essential services, including payments and financial services. The first is integral to the second.
• In Sudan, the pandemic has prompted a 64 percent increase in person to person mobile transfers.
• FinTech solutions will have an ongoing role to play in facilitating ongoing economic activity as well as government stimulus transfers to citizens.
• Although Sudan has 8 million citizens living abroad, international remittances are still effectively blocked due to the country’s designation, by the U.S., as a state-sponsor of terrorism. The infrastructure, though, is in place to facilitate a large inflow of remittances if/when the designation is lifted.

The interview was conducted by Ahmed Aboshock, an IFC-Milken Institute Capital Market Scholar from the Central Bank of Sudan.