Dr Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank revealed that Sub-Saharan Africa will need $425 billion by 2030 to support its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adesina disclosed this at the opening of the 2021 Annual Meetings of the Bank held virtually on Wednesday, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.
“Africa’s cumulative GDP losses are estimated between $145 billion and $190 billion. Africa will need a lot of resources to support its recovery. Low-income sub-Saharan African countries alone will need $245 billion by 2030, while all of sub-Saharan Africa will need $425 billion by 2030.
Africa needs strong actions to support its recovery,” he said.
He added that the bank launched a three-billion-dollar social impact bond on global capital markets, which was at the time, the largest ever U.S denominated social bond in world history.
“We announced a $10 billion Crisis Response Facility. We provided $28 million to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. It is still challenging, no doubt, but Africa is starting to move forward, again,” he said.
On vaccines procurement, Adeshina said:
“We will leverage our resources. We will not work alone. We will work in partnership with others. Together, I am confident we will get vaccines to all in Africa.”
I would have thought that Africa would use it’s resources on high quality research to determine the reasons the COVID pandemic has been mild in certain areas and leverage this evidence to help the world.