TheAfrican Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina has called for debt relief as the continent suffers from the coronavirus pandemic. He made the call while speaking in an exclusive interview on CNN’s First Move with Julia Chatterley.
Adesina cautioned that the economic outlook was not all bad news, but that any positives rely on access to vaccinations. “We project 3.4% grow back this year, but all of that is conditional on two things, one is access to vaccines, secondly the issue of debt. I think that’s important to improve access of Africa to vaccines. We need to have vaccine solidarity, COVAX is doing a great job but the amounts are still minuscule as far as we are concerned.
“Africa is not looking for a free pass. We’re just looking for a way in which Africa’s fiscal space gets dealt with.”
He also stressed the need for global cooperation to end the pandemic, “If we deal with this pandemic in one part of the world, and we don’t deal with other parts of the world, we’re all going back to square one.”
“The issue is that’s not all just negative, we project that Africa will grow back. We project 3.4% grow back this year, but all of that is conditional on two things, one is access to vaccines, secondly the issue of debt. On the issue of access to vaccines, earlier on this show I was listening to that, that is actually a big problem for us because we don’t have that luxury. So far 14.6 million vaccines have been delivered in Africa. And people can’t even get shots in their hands. And that 14.6 million is only 1% of what we need actually to get to 60% of herd immunity. We are way off mark on that. I think that’s important to improve access of Africa to vaccines. We need to have vaccine solidarity, COVAX is doing a great job, but the amounts are still minuscule as far as we are concerned.
The faster we get the vaccines, the better. I just told you that we’ve got only 1% right now in terms of people getting the jabs in their hands. So to get a herd immunity, you need 60%. So you’re looking at at least 840 million doses. So it’s going to take — I don’t see that happening for another year or two because of the slow pace of producing the vaccine and getting them out. It just going to be very, very difficult and I’m quite concerned about that. And of course, the longer it takes for Africans to get vaccinated, of course now you see Europe saying you can’t travel if you don’t have the vaccine passports, people are going to think Africa is the last zone to get access to vaccines. I don’t want that to happen. So for us at the African Development Bank we also have to look beyond the current situation, looking medium term and also long term.’’
The African Development Bank’s (AfDB) economic outlook warns that without more aid 39 million Africans are at risk of falling into extreme poverty this year. Adesina discussed the worrying figures, “The GDP of Africa went down by $175 billion. Last year, we had 30 million people went into extreme poverty. This year if that trend continues, 39 million people going into extreme poverty, hunger and all of that.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this before. We projected last year -2.1%, that is the lowest growth rate in 50 years in Africa. You don’t see the virus, but the effects of it, it’s just so mind boggling. The GDP of Africa went down by $175 billion. Last year, we had 30 million people that went into extreme poverty. This year if that trend continues, 39 million people going into extreme poverty, hunger and all of that, it’s been just quite a lot.
