Opinions

The coronavirus will challenge African economies already saddled with debt, shrinking budget revenue, and compromised health systems. A continent-wide approach that applies lessons learned in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak and elsewhere during the current pandemic will be needed to prevent fiscal ruin.   As COVID-19 crisscrosses Africa, and policymakers…

Combating COVID-19 is more challenging in Africa than in other parts of the world. But a two-year moratorium on all external-debt repayments would at least give governments there the fiscal space they need to respond to the pandemic.     After a slow start, COVID-19 has spread increasingly rapidly throughout…

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to impose heavy human, financial, economic, and social costs on Africa. But the crisis also creates an opportunity to re-examine the continent’s fiscal and economic-policy priorities, build stronger health and social sectors, and establish a global fund to support productive investment.     The coronavirus…

These are very difficult days, as the world faces one of its worst challenges ever: the novel coronavirus pandemic. And it seems almost no nation is spared. As infection rates rise, so does panic across financial markets, as economies drastically slow down, and supply chains are severely disrupted.    Extraordinary…

Only by coming together will the world be able to face down the COVID-19 pandemic and its shattering consequences. At an emergency virtual meeting last Thursday, G20 leaders took steps in the right direction.  But we are still far away from having a coordinated, articulated global response that meets the…

The African Continental Free Trade Area will help dismantle tariff and non-tariff barriers amid a pandemic and global recession. Accelerating Africa’s economic integration will cushion its fragile economies and help turn the continent into the world’s largest common market.   In 2018, 44 countries signed the African Continental Free Trade…

As the pandemic reaches the continent, countries from Morocco to Malawi are facing a health crisis and an economic shock     Now that almost all of Africa’s 54 countries are reporting cases of the new coronavirus, one thing is certain: The pandemic will have drastic consequences in Africa, especially…

Only a global victory can end this pandemic, not a temporary rich countries’ win     There is a major flaw in the strategy to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. Advanced economies are unveiling unprecedented economic stimulus packages. African countries, by contrast, lack the wherewithal to make similarly meaningful interventions. Yet…

Whilst journalists and commentators have focussed recently on lessons from Asia in relation to the current Covid-19 pandemic, with some referencing pandemics that have hit Europe and North America in the past, a less obvious question to ask is whether there are also lessons from Africa?      I would…

Rather than imposing damaging and ineffective travel bans, African authorities should focus on mitigating the pandemic.     In April 1914, as Europe was moving towards war, Dakar, the capital of present-day Senegal, was hit by an epidemic of bubonic plague that within a year, according to one account, wiped out…