The allocation of special drawing rights (SDR) took effect on Monday 23 August. The announcement was made by Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva.

SDRs are allocated to member countries in proportion to their IMF quota. Only 33 billion will go to African countries out of the 650 billion dollars available. South Africa therefore receives $4.3 billion, or 0.6% of the total allocation, ahead of Nigeria ($3.5 billion), Egypt ($2.9 billion), DRC ($1.5 billion) and Morocco ($1.2 billion). For their part, the United States receives 118 billion dollars (83 billion SDRs, or 18% of the total amount), and China, 43 billion dollars (6.6%). “This allocation is a real injection into the arm of the global economy and, if used wisely, a unique opportunity to overcome this unprecedented crisis. It will provide additional liquidity to the global economic system, supplementing countries' foreign exchange reserves and reducing their dependence on more costly domestic or external debt. Countries can use the space thus created to support their economy and step up their fight against the crisis,” Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement. SDRs are distributed to countries in proportion to their IMF quotas. This means that approximately 275 billion dollars are intended for emerging and developing countries, including 21 billion for low-income countries, which represents up to 6% of their GDP for some of them.