AfDB shareholders committed to tackling Covid-19
ABIDJAN - The African Development Bank (AfDB) shareholders have shown strong support for proposals to tackle Covid-19 as the continent faces a possibility of a third wave amid poor vaccine access.
This emerged from three- day annual meetings of the bank which ended at the weekend. The meetings included the 47th meeting of the Governors of the African Development Fund, the bank’s concessional lending arm. Part of the proposal is that AfDB, the continent’s only development finance institution with an AAA credit rating, act as a conduit for International Monetary Fund (IMF) special drawing rights, which it would then on-lend to African countries. AfDB president Dr Akinwumi Adesina proposed an African stability mechanism, modelled on a European one, to act as a firewall against external shocks.
Dr Adesina also pledged that the bank would strengthen support to African countries as they tackle the pandemic’s economic and health impacts. Going forward, he said the AfDB would invest heavily in domestic vaccine manufacturing and in Africa’s healthcare system, noting that only 51 percent of public health facilities have basic water and sanitation, and only 31 percent of healthcare facilities have electricity. The president underlined the fact that Africa imports 60-70 percent of its pharmaceutical drugs.
Adesina said: “The lives of 1.2 billion people in Africa are at risk… we must give hope to the poor, the vulnerable, by ensuring that every African, regardless of their income level, gets access to quality healthcare, as well as health insurance and social protection.”
Kenneth Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s Finance Minister and Chairperson of the African Development Bank Board of Governors, cautioned at the start of the meetings that Africa risked being left behind as a result of the pandemic and was “staring down the possibility of a lost decade, where its economic trajectory pulls further away from that of the rest of the world.” He said the African Development Bank should take a leading role in the continent’s recovery. –