Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, remittances flow into Nigeria, declined by 27.7 percent, in 2020. Nigeria alone accounted for over 40 percent of the $42 billion remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa.
On a broader scale, excluding Nigeria, remittance flows to Sub-Saharan African increased by 2.3 percent.
According to the World Bank, data on remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa are sparse and of uneven quality, with some countries still using the outdated Fourth IMF Balance of Payments Manual rather than the Sixth, while several other countries do not report data at all.
High-frequency phone surveys in some countries reported decreases in remittances for a large percentage of households even while recorded remittances reported by official sources report increases in flows. The shift from informal to formal channels due to the closure of borders explains in part the increase in the volume of remittances recorded by central banks.
