Covid-19 set to cost Africa billions
The African Development Bank Group (ADBG) has estimated that Covid-19 could cost the continent a gross domestic product loss of between $22.1 billion (about R420 billion) and $88.3 billion.
A nurse walks past one of the only three working ambulances at the Zengeza Clinic in Chitungwiza on March 20, 2020. – Since the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak began in China at the end of last year the worldwide mantra has been to “wash your hands” thoroughly and often to avoid contracting or spreading the virus. But in Zimbabwe, a southern African country on its knees after two decades of economic misrule, basic infrastructures are failing and health services are all but extinct. (Photo by Jekesai NJIKIZANA / AFP)
This comes amid fears that the figure of coronavirus cases in Africa is set to increase from the close to 6,000 recorded over the weekend to a million in the months ahead, with the death toll already having reached at least 234.
While in its daily updated dashboard the World Health Organisation listed South Africa as topping the 43 affected African countries with the number of confirmed coronavirus cases standing at over 1,600, with Malawi and Burundi recording only three infected people – at least 130 people have died in Algeria and South Africa has reported 11 deaths.
According to ADBG president Akinwumi Adesina, the virus was set to further squeeze the continent’s fiscus, as deficits were estimated to widen by 3.5 to 4.9 percentage points.
ADBG estimates, said Adesina, indicated that Africa’s total public debt could increase, under the base case scenario, from $1.86 trillion at the end of 2019 to over $2 trillion in 2020, compared to $1.9 trillion projected “in a no-pandemic scenario”.
He said the pandemic crisis faced by Africa called for “bold actions”, which included the temporarily deferring of debt owed by countries to multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.
Endorsing a resolution taken by African Union (AU) heads of state who have urged for the lifting of United States-imposed economic sanctions on countries such as Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya and Somalia, in the face of the outbreak of Covid-19, Adesina said: “Sanctions work against economies but not against the virus.”
Among other key decisions reached at Friday’s AU bureau of heads of state and government teleconference meeting chaired by President Cyril Ramaphosa, which discussed the African response to Covid-19, leaders resolved to:
- Establish humanitarian and trade corridors in a spirit of African solidarity and integration.
- Call for international cooperation and support in dealing with the virus.
- Pledge a sum of $12.5 million and an additional $4.5 million to the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Come up with a continental approach; and to speak with one voice.
- Call for a comprehensive stimulus package for Africa.
– brians@citizen.co.za
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