Africa billionaires urged to help in coronavirus fight
KANO: Workers in the northern Nigerian city of Kano set out rows of new hospital beds inside two cavernous tents that have been hastily erected on the pitch of an empty football stadium. The facilities have been built to become an isolation centre for COVID-19 patients as Africa’s most populous nation braces for a potential surge in infections. The person behind this project is Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, who was born in Kano and has built up a personal fortune on the back of his concrete empire that Forbes estimates at some $8 billion.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and biggest economy, boasting a handful of billionaires whose super yachts can be seen bobbing on the waters of megacity Lagos. But it is also a land of vast inequality where almost half of the 200 million population live in dire poverty and years of neglect has left the health system in tatters. Now those who have made it big in Nigeria’s cutthroat business world are being called on to help tackle a crisis that experts warn could overwhelm the country.
At the end of February, a coalition of some 50 leading businesses spearheaded by Dangote’s foundation and Nigeria’s Access Bank pledged around $57 million (53 million euros) to bolster capacity. “If everyone does their own thing then it creates a cacophony,” Zouera Youssoufou, the managing director of the Dangote Foundation, told AFP. “So everyone puts in what they can depending on their size and they can pool resources.” The private sector is building seven emergency isolation centers in key cities and looking to help increase testing rates which currently languish at around just 5,000. Around the globe, wealthy individuals from Bill Gates to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey have promised major contributions to take on the global pandemic. China’s richest man Jack Ma, the founder of online retailer Alibaba, has dispatched over a million test kits and protective equipment to Africa. — AFP