What next for monetary policy?

Monetary policy in sub-Saharan Africa has all of a sudden become interesting. Ghana surprised expectations by hiking interest rates last month, while countries in East Africa have continued to cut rates. And this has all taken place against a backdrop of signals from the US Fed that it intends to scale back its asset purchasing programme. In this Watch, we assess the near-term outlook for monetary policy across sub-Saharan Africa and what the tapering of QE3 could mean for interest rates across the region.