The Middle East Africa region has some of the poorest countries as well as some of the richest. In many countries, the development of the banking infrastructure is underway and basic payment systems are also under development. It is one of the most difficult regions in which to operate multi-country liquidity management solutions. Although some banks are now able to provide liquidity management services across the whole region, others just provide services in either the MENA region - Middle East and North Africa - or the South Africa region.

The MENA region is made up of the Middle East countries: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and Palestine, and the Northern Africa region: in which the main countries are - Algeria, Egypt, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.

In Africa there are five regions: Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Middle Africa, Western Africa, and Southern Africa.

Main Developments
The main developments in cash and liquidity management solutions in Middle East and Africa over the last 2-3 years have been:

• multi-national corporations in the region have continued to centralize their operations in shared service centres and introduce cash pooling wherever possible
• companies have renewed their focus on improving receivables processing and reducing days sales outstanding
• the provision of customer financing programmes.

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