Health services for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), responsible for 41 million of all deaths globally, have been severely disrupted as we speak. On the livelihoods front, COVID-19 has been projected to cause the first increase in global poverty since 1998. It is set to push up to 49 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020. Sub-Saharan Africa is no exception and is projected to be hardest hit in livelihoods terms.

 What is clear, as COVID-19 now enters month after month in Africa, is that beyond a health crisis, an economic catastrophe is looming. This is worsened by the fact that this emergency is coming to exacerbate an already precarious socioeconomic situation. In a continent whose economies are already 20times less productive than competitors in the global, Africa is projected to have lost $29billion in the initial months, and is hurtling down to negative 5.1% GDP growth for 2020. This is going to compound an already existing challenge of youth unemployment where currently there is an urgent need  to create no less than 12million jobs each year for the youth. But as things stands, an estimated 50% of all jobs are set to be lost under this COVID-19.

 As if this is not enough, currently 257 million citizens go to bed hungry as the continent at the same time losses food worth $US 48 billion simply because of inefficiencies in the entire agro-value chain. It suffice to say that COVID-19 is compounding Africa’s precarious scenario with an up to 7% contraction occasioned by supply chain disruptions. When you put all these together with the elephant in the room called Climate Change it becomes something else. It is like adding salt to injury so to speak. I say so because Climate Change Emergency is already reducing productivity and projected to lower incomes in Africa and other developing regions by a massive 75%.

The cumulative effects of COVID-19 adding to existing vulnerabilities is pushing the region into its first economic recession in 25 years. With these strains on one hand, and ever-increasing global competition on the other, it is very likely, that some businesses that have closed will never re-open. Some jobs that have been lost, will never be recovered. It suffices to say that Africa, which is a socioeconomically fragile region, is being pushed further up the vulnerability scale and this will only further plunge millions into suffering.

COVID-19 crisis is yet another reminder of the urgent importance to surmount and emerge stronger. And this leads us to two fundamental questions that needs to be answered. First, how do we re-imagine, re-organise and re-design Africa’s development under the changing climate and the unsettling realities of a COVID-19 plaguing our world and more so Africa? And second, how do we rebuild better, in a way that can lift the youth from the fangs of unemployment and at the same time salvage the  challenges currently plaguing the informal as we position Africa to be global competitive?....Read more from the attached document