Nigerian has formerly become a member of the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI) a pan African institution founded in 2001 by African States to cover the trade and investment risks of companies doing business in Africa. The ATI predominantly provides Political Risk, Credit Insurance and, Surety Insurance and in 2019, it closed the year with exposures of US$6.4 billion and continued to post record results for the eighth consecutive year with 132% growth on the net profit over 2018 owing to strong demand for ATI’s insurance solutions from the international financial sector and from African governments. Membership in ATI provides African countries with additional trade and investment insurance capacity, which helps cushion against the negative economic impacts of COVID-19. With this development, Nigeria will attract additional insurance capacity to help attract investments.
President Muhammadu Buhari
Nigeria contributed US$14.1 million to ATI’s capital in 2019 with African Development Bank’s (AfDB) financial support and fully completed its membership process through the ratification of the ATI’s Treaty. ATI expects an estimated US$138 million in additional capital from prospective new shareholders in the coming months.
The signing of the instrument of ratification to the African Trade Insurance Agency’s (ATI) treaty by President Muhammadu Buhari which took place earlier this week finalized Nigeria’s membership in ATI in a process that began some years ago. Membership in ATI allows Nigeria to attract additional insurance capacity to help attract investments and it also increases ATI’s capacity to support sovereign and commercial transactions in the country. Ultimately, Nigeria benefits because effective risk mitigation is vital to increasing investments and trade flows.
Nigeria’s membership comes at a critical time for the economy as a sharp drop in oil prices due to a COVID-related one-third decrease in demand, has impacted the country’s spending plans. The IMF predicts that falling oil prices will halve Nigeria’s export earnings to US$26 billion, which traditionally accounts for 90% of the government’s budget.ATI is well positioned to support African countries through the pandemic. In the last three years, ATI has helped crowd-in nearly US$3 billion of investments to several African countries. With ATI’s sovereign and sub-sovereign credit wrap solutions, governments and state owned enterprises have been able to obtain competitively priced and longer-term financing.
In Nigeria, ATI has already provided significant support in the country’s oil and gas sector covering oil traders as well as in the financial sector insuring financial institutions. According to Benjamin Mugisha, ATI’s Chief Underwriting Officer, “as one of the largest economies in Africa with a vibrant private sector, ATI looks forward to working with the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank, local financial institutions and corporate traders to support Nigeria’s economic diversification plans and its post-COVID recover.”
As an important strategic partner, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has played a significant role in funding the membership participation of several African countries. Between 2010 and 2020, AfDB has provided US$70 million to fund the shareholding of seven African governments – Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. In the coming months, five countries are expected to become fully-fledged members while an existing member state indicated its intention to increase its capital contribution. These countries will cumulatively benefit from US$91 million in financial support from the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank, which is ATI’s other strategic partner.
Furthermore, the recently held General Meeting approved three new membership applications worth US$47 million, demonstrating ATI’s ability to mobilize international support to implement its development mandate and support African countries’ economic recovery from the COVID-19 global pandemic. Since inception, ATI has supported US$62 billion worth of investments and trade into Africa. And for over a decade, ATI has maintained an ‘A/Stable’ rating for Financial Strength and Counterparty Credit by Standard & Poor’s, and in 2019, ATI obtained an A3/Stable rating from Moody’s.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Spearheaded under the AUDA-NEPAD “100,000 MSMEs by 2021” (100K MSMEs) programme launched by the African Union Development Agency — AUDA-NEPAD and the Ecobank Group, the MSME Academy provides easy access to practical training and resources on financing opportunities in various countries, how to build digital presence for businesses and how to adapt business operations in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Panafrican MSME Academy offers free access to market intelligence, a host of mentors with diverse experience, while assisting with access to funding opportunities.
The MSME Academy will have three components: an informational webinar with invited speakers, a series of virtual instructor-led trainings and mentorship for the MSMEs.
MSMEs are invited to join our first series of informational webinars tailored for MSME operating in Ghana.
The first webinar provides tips on access to finance and building a digital presence.
When: August 21, 2020 Where: Register to the MSME Academy at https://msmeacademy.nepad.org/
About AUDA-NEPAD 100k MSMEs
The AUDA-NEPAD 100K MSMEs programme is focused on the implementation of the Agenda 2063 Aspiration number one (1), which aims at building a Prosperous Africa, based on Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development.
The programme will provide support to African MSMEs and is structured in three pillars, namely: the MSME Academy, MSME Marketplace and MSME Financing Support Programme to be delivered through an MSME Digital Platform.
1.
MSME Academy: The MSME Academy aims to build the capacities of MSMEs across Africa through a combination of relevant content library, a network of institutions specialized in MSME support such as incubators and accelerators, and a community of peers, mentors and advisors.
2.
MSME Marketplace: a consolidated marketplace of marketplaces, enabling MSMEs to access e-commerce, procurement and alternative financing opportunities across the continent 3.
MSME Financing Support Program: a scheme that will bring together financial institutions, guarantee funds and other institutions to reduce the cost of risk for lenders to deliver capital to MSMEs at scale.
The objective is to radically expand access to finance by aggregating smaller financial institutions such as micro-credit institutions and credit unions that have access to micro-enterprises, standardising their processes and building trust in their capabilities.
The MSME Digital Platform is a one-stop-shop for all MSMEs across Africa to access all these three programmes which jointly address MSMEs’ challenges with access to capacity building, markets and capital.
About AUDA-NEPAD The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD is the development agency of the African Union, coordinating and executing priority regional and continental development projects to promote regional integration towards the accelerated realisation of Agenda 2063 — Africa’s vision and action plan.
We are mandated to strengthen capacity of Member States and regional bodies.
About Ecobank Group Ecobank Transnational Incorporated
(‘ETI’) is the parent company of the Ecobank Group, the leading independent pan-African banking group.
The Ecobank Group employs over 14,800 people and serves more than 23 million customers in the consumer, commercial and corporate banking sectors across 33 African countries.
The Group has a banking license in France and representative offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Beijing, China; London, the UK and Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
The Group offers a full suite of banking products, services and solutions including bank and deposit accounts, loans, cash management, advisory, trade, securities, wealth and asset management.
ETI is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchanges in Lagos, the Ghana Stock Exchange in Accra, and the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières in Abidjan.
For further information please visit www.ecobank.com.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning writer
The African Energy Chamber has appointed South Africa’s leading businesswoman Nosizwe Nokwe-Macamo into its Advisory Board. With this development, Nosizwe will be advising and supporting the work of the Chamber within its Natural Gas and Local Content committees from 2020 to 2022. Nosizwe was one of South Africa’s first woman petrochemical engineers, and has built over two decades of experience working in the continent’s hydrocarbons industry.
Nosizwe Nokwe-Macamo
That experience and expertise in the petroleum and energy industry spans across several countries on the African continent during which she has been in the leadership of numerous key portfolios, projects and operations across the petroleum value chain: upstream, midstream and downstream in major oil and gas companies.
Her demonstrated leadership and industry knowledge has seen her serving within the boards of several oil & gas companies and development finance institutions where she brought an in-depth understanding of the sector and its dynamics. Nosizwe is currently the Executive Chairman & Founder of Raise Africa Investments, which focuses on investing in niche African manufacturing businesses with high-growth potential across the value-chain.
NJ Ayuk is Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber,
“Nosizwe is an accomplished and result-driven businesswoman who understands the most pressing issues our industry is facing today, from local content development and economic empowerment to capital raising and financing. Her passion for African entrepreneurship is remarkable and her expertise in growing businesses across the value-chain, especially in gas, will be critical to supporting the Chamber’s work,” stated Nj Ayuk, Executive Chairman at the African Energy Chamber.
Nosizwe is an Alumni of Moscow State University of Oil and Gas Russia (MSc Petrochemical Engineering 1990), Baku Oil and Gas Academy Azerbaijan (Diploma Oil and Gas Refining 1984), INSEAD (International Management Certificate – 2003), GIBS (Global Executive Development Programme – 2004) and WITS (Certificate in Finance and Accounting-2004).
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Before COVID-19, spending on business travel totaled $1.5 trillion a year (about 1.7% of world GDP). Now it is down to a trickle, as countries have closed their borders and social distancing has taken hold. Planes have been grounded, hotels are closed, and executives are not earning frequent flier miles. Many travel and hospitality jobs are feeling the consequences. But if this were all there was to it, the impact, however large, would probably be much smaller than the decline in general international tourism and easily reversible, once the pandemic is over.
Alas, recent research by Harvard’s Frank Neffke, Michele Coscia of IT University in Copenhagen, and me, just published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Human Behavior, finds that the impact of closing down business travel may be much larger and more durable. To understand why, we first must ask ourselves why business travel was so big to begin with. And why had it been growing at three times the rate of global GDP, despite the availability of Skype, Facetime, WhatsApp, or just e-mail – all tools that predate both COVID-19 and Zoom?
Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank
Was it all about perks, or was that $1.5 trillion mostly money well spent? If so, why, and what are the implications if those activities are now restricted?
Clearly, when we started this research, we could not have imagined such a complete shutdown of business travel. But our analysis does shed light on the possible consequences.
At the time, we were studying technological diffusion. Technology, we argue, is really three types of knowledge: embodied knowledge in tools; codified knowledge in codes, recipes, formulas, algorithms, and how-to-do manuals; and tacit knowledge in brains. Of the three, tools and codes are easy to move around, but knowhow moves very slowly from brain to brain through a long process of imitation, repetition, and feedback, as when learning to speak a new language or to play a musical instrument.
As Malcolm Gladwell argues in his book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become good at something. Faced with the difficulty of moving knowhow from brain to brain, people long ago figured out that it was much easier to just move the brains. Many scholars, including us, had studied the movement of knowhow between firms, regions, and countries through labor mobility, migration and diasporas.
But what about business travel? In previous work, we had shown that it is poorly correlated with trade or even new flows of foreign direct investment. It seems to be much more closely correlated with the number of establishments in one country that are owned by firms in another country.
According to Dun & Bradstreet, there are 1.5 million such establishments in the world. To run a firm, you need not only information, but also the capacity to figure things out. You need knowhow. One of the advantages of multinational corporations and global consulting, accounting, and law firms is that they can move that capacity to different points in their network.
With anonymized and aggregated data on business travel provided by the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, we were able to figure out if business travel was important in technological diffusion by making knowhow available to recipient countries. That is exactly what we found. Business travel from countries that are good in a particular industry translates into higher productivity, employment, and exports in those industries in the recipient country in the subsequent three years. Moreover, the variation in business travel associated with differences in bilateral visa regimes enables us to interpret this relationship not just as a correlation, but as a causal link.
The countries that benefit the most from inflows of knowhow through business travel are Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Hong Kong, and Singapore. There are no developing countries among the top 25 recipients. The best performers in the developing world are Panama, Uruguay, Serbia, Malaysia, South Africa, and Chile. The countries that share their knowledge more profusely are Germany, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, France, and Japan. India, Brazil, and China rank 12th, 15th, and 17th, respectively.
According to our estimates, a complete permanent shutdown of international business travel would shrink global GDP by over 17% of GDP, an order of magnitude larger than the 1.7% of GDP that was being spent in 2018, before the pandemic. The worst-affected countries would be those that currently benefit the most from inflows of knowhow.
The pre-Covid-19 world as we knew it increasingly relied on the ability to source knowhow globally. Economies that were able to connect to these knowhow flows benefited from higher productivity, output, and exports. Much of the developing world was quite peripheral to these flows, but whatever they got was still very important for their diversification and development.
Many people, including me, are finding that they can be as productive working from home and connecting through Zoom as they were in the office or traveling for business. But this may be a short-term illusion that varies significantly by activity. The International Monetary Fund has been able to disburse financial assistance to many countries quickly, by doing deskwork, talking through Webex, and then just wiring funds. But development banks have had much more trouble putting together infrastructure projects, where physical presence is unavoidable. Local firms have had trouble building structures, repairing equipment, or figuring out how to improve operations without access to global in-person knowhow.
Our research implies that the world will pay a significant price for the shutdown of business travel, which will become apparent through lower post-crisis productivity growth, employment and output. Time is a non-renewable resource and the lost travel is not coming back, even if future travel returns to normal. Although the shutdown of travel is unavoidable, given the public-health imperative, the costs are real. These costs will rise further if we forgo the global investments in vaccinations and certifications, needed to reopen travel safely as quickly as possible. And, obviously, countries will pay an even higher price if they use COVID-19 as an excuse to advance a restrictive visa agenda, as US President Donald Trump’s administration tried to do by restricting professional visas and barring foreign students whose campuses do not reopen in the fall.
To be sure, the pandemic and technologies such as Zoom is likely to show that some business travel will really not be necessary. But our research suggests that moving brains to share knowhow will be just as crucial in the post-COVID-19 world as it was before, and that the consequences of shutting down business travel will be long-lived.
Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank, is a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Harvard Growth Lab.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Efforts aimed at helping small and medium scale businesses in Morocco to remain afloat is yielding fruits with the €40 million financing package from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to support private businesses and trade in Morocco. The package which will be disbursed through Crédit Immobilier et Hôtelier, SA will help to strengthen resilience of local economy.
EBRD representatives Francis Malige
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) form the core of the Moroccan economy and are the most affected by the current health and economic crisis. This facility is in line with the EBRD’s and CIH’s commitment to strengthening the resilience of Moroccan small businesses and to alleviate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Under this facility, the EBRD will provide a €20 million loan to CIH to provide as medium-term financing to private SMEs, increasing the availability of funding beyond the Greater Casablanca-Rabat region, where 70 per cent of the Moroccan economy is concentrated.
This is expected to help the swift recovery of the local economy, as well as strengthen its resilience in the medium and long term. In addition to this financing, the EBRD is providing a €20 million trade finance line to help facilitate the export and import transactions of Moroccan businesses.The partnership, the first signed between the EBRD and CIH, will support CIH in its strategic focus towards SMEs by increasing its lending capacity to this sector.
The virtual signing ceremony took place with the presence of EBRD representatives Francis Malige, Managing Director for Financial Institutions; Marie-Alexandra Veilleux-Laborie, Head of Morocco; Mike Taylor, Head of Financial Institutions of the SEMED region; and the chairman and CEO of CIH, Lotfi Sekkat.
Operating in Morocco since 1920, CIH Bank is a universal bank offering innovative and digital banking solutions, serving individuals, professionals and businesses of all sizes. Morocco is a founding member of the EBRD and became a country of operations in 2012. To date, the EBRD has invested €2.4 billion in Morocco through 65 projects.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Art is esoteric. Music is spiritual. In the heart of spirituality lies the soul of music. Deities crave sounds and gods demand music to unleash their powers. There is no spiritual movement without some kind of musical accompaniment.
Majek Fashek
It is from the spiritual realm musicians draw inspiration. Some have said they experience some kind of esoteric presence while creating masterpieces. The great Victor Uwaifo swears his soul was pierced by the ‘Mammy Water’ (Water Goddess) who he claimed he encountered while meditating at the Lagos Bar Beach. His hit ‘Guitar Boy’ was born from that spiritual experience which he described as eerie but as real as if he could touch the beautiful Goddess who rose from the sea and transmutted into the lyrics, down to the Guitar strings of the song.
Majek Fashek, easily Africa’s greatest musician, before the demons began to disturb his soul, was a prophet whose spiritualism came alive in his songs, hit after hit. Indeed, Majek Fashek’s contact with spiritism came early and as he said in an interview, he was a prophet from the age of seven, ministering in his church.A fan once described a solemn night when they were all at the stadium having quiet drinks at the Jazz Club. It was a very silent night he said: “We were all chatting at this point, as the music had been turned off. A strange sound pierced the air from somewhere not too far away.
We could make out the strings of a Guitar but when the voice followed, we had chills all over. It was as if the hair on the nape of my neck stood still. It was the most sonorious sound, as if it was coming from Heaven itself, it was like an Angel was in a sober mood and decided to release his rather solemn message in a song. There was dead silence from us all as we listened, enraptured in such celestial sounds enveloping us all and swallowing the night. When he was done, we dared to move closer…behold it was Majek Fashek.
This was when it dawned on us that he was no ordinary being. We knew that day that Nigeria’s superstar had arrived. Shortly after, he blessed the world with ‘Send Down the Rain’.”The mega hit, evergreen ‘Send Down The Rain’ validated Majek’s position as a prophet of sorts, perhaps of God because everytime the song was played on radio, rain fell heavily. Almost two decades after, when Majek had been driven by his demons into the wilderness, a lady recounts that at the time the earth was scorched by the sun in her resident home located in northern Nigeria. She remembers how Majek’s ‘Send Down the Rain’ was played on radio and how she happily told her husband to expect rain that day: “It was an experience I will never forget in my entire life.
This was well over two decades after the release of the hit song, ‘Send Down the Rain’. We were all sweating, the house was hot for weeks, there had been little or no electricity for days and the song suddenly came over the radio. We were always listening to radio because of power outage then. I looked at my husband and said, ‘expect rain today’, he mocked me that I was foolish but that evening, the clouds gathered and the winds bellowed in the first rainfall that year. It was a massive one; what do you call that? “
Majek’s descent into the wilderness began when he left the shores of Nigeria for America, in search of a bigger playing field in the international market. Nobody was in doubt that Majek was an international product who would surely become a megastar world over. His rendition of the popular ‘Hotel California’ was played on MTV making Majek one of the first African musicians to played on the international music channel. Listening to Majek’s rendition of ‘Hotel Carlifornia’ today is still a pleasantly chilly experience.Majek Fashek singing was indeed an elixir to the soul.Speaking on his spirituality on HIPTV, Fashek aknowleged that God gave him the inspiration to make good songs which remained alive. He said: “In every season there must be rain. So as long as there is God, the message of the prisoner of conscience, will never fade out. God always gives me the inspiration every year to write new songs.“My music cannot fade out because I believe in Jesus Christ.”
The general belief is that Majek Fashek ventured into drugs while in America and became an addict of hard drugs. All his life, Majek continued to deny this claim.Even after he was taken into rehabilitation having turned a begger, found by a journalist, Joseph Edgar, begging under the bridge, Majek embraced rehabilitation but later cut it short insisting that his problem was not drugs but the demons which plagued his being. Before his America sojourn, Majek was like an adrenalin shot whose infectious energy, charm pierced the soul like laser beams. Then America took him, nurtured him but spat him out and returned him broken.Yet Majek blamed the demons. What are these demons?
Fashek is said to have read a book which only very strong men read and come out normal.Some people claim that Fashek dabbled into deep spirituality and was reading the dreaded, ‘Seven Books of Moses.’Majek himself admitted in an interview to reading a book which messed his life. He confided that he read a book which he was not supposed to read. One of his singers and close friends, Imona, also alluded to this fact. He said in an interview: “Majek’s problem is spiritual. It was not caused by drug addiction. I have worked and lived with him. Apart from the fact that we worked together, he is my brother. So I am in the position to know where his problem came from. But we have decided to leave everything in God’s hands. We are praying for divine intervention in his case”
According to Wikipedia, ” The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is an 18th- or 19th-century magical text allegedly written by Moses, and passed down as hidden books of the Hebrew Bible.”The Seven Books of Moses is described by some as a book of sorcery and enchantments used to conjure spirits, demons and Angels, saying it could be a very dangerous book for anyone who does not know how to use it. Some say the book is the documentation of the exchange of recitation between Moses and Egyptian magicians before the dividing of the Red Sea. “It depicts semiphoras or seals which are said to be magical and is also said to contain powerful names of God.”, a historian notes.
Was this the book Fashek was referring to when he said he read a book he shouldn’t have? Did the book unleash the demons which Majek was to fight for the better part of his last years on earth? Majek who once referred to himself as a spirit, came down with an ailment last year and had been in the UK receiving treatment. One of his close allies based in the UK revealed that the past year has been really tough and only last week they were positive Majek would pull through but that was not to be. The Rainmaker took his last breath, succumbing finally to God. Majek was a deeply religious man, had no malice in his heart, sang for the emacipation of mankind but lived his life in domination of the demons he admitted he himself conjured. Africa’s greatest has gone to rest.May his soul rest in peace.
Moji Danisa, a journalist writes from Abuja.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The African Union is collaborating with other pan African agencies to create a platform for micro small and medium enterprises to help provide access to market intelligence, a host of mentors with diverse experience, while assisting with access to funding opportunities across the continent. The platform is the brainchild of the African Union Development Agency AUDA formerly known as NEPAD in partnership with Ecobank Group. Spearheaded under the AUDA-NEPAD “100,000 MSMEs by 2021” (100K MSMEs) programme for Africa’s Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, the Academy provides easy access to practical training and resources on financing opportunities in various countries, materials on how to build digital presence for businesses and how to adapt business operations in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform will also provide access to market intelligence, a host of mentors with diverse experience, while assisting with access to funding opportunities.
AUDA-NEPAD Chief Executive Officer Dr Ibrahim Assane Mayaki
The MSME Academy has three components: an informational webinar with invited speakers, a series of virtual instructor-led training programmes and mentorship for the MSMEs. The Academy has country specific content with world-class pan-African design to ensure the right balance between local realities (challenges and opportunities of the MSMEs) with a structured pan-African approach for the sustainability and scalability of the initiatives.
AUDA-NEPAD Chief Executive Officer Dr Ibrahim Assane Mayaki declared: “In this continent where the majority of the countries are low income and middle-income economies, where youth account for almost 60% of all of Africa’s unemployed, the contribution of MSMEs and informal enterprises to the GDP growth and employment creation is fundamental. As the continent faces the socio-economic uncertainties brought about by the outbreak of COVID-19, the AUDA-NEPAD MSME Academy which is delivered in partnership with Ecobank, aims to foster resilience and the survival of MSMEs’ in these critical times.”
Ade Ayeyemi, Ecobank Group CEO, commented: “The impact of COVID-19 continues to be felt across Africa with serious challenges and uncertainties for our MSMEs. The MSME Academy comes at an appropriate time to provide the right level of support to this vulnerable and important business segment in Africa. We have leveraged on the expertise of our globally recognised Ecobank Academy to develop country specific content tailored to MSMEs in Africa and therefore encourage MSMEs to register and participate in the various available virtual training programmes. “
Ade Ayeyemi, Ecobank Group CEO
Africa’s Micro Small and Medium Enterprises are invited to join the informational webinars to learn about tips on access to finance and on building digital presence from speakers. The first wave of countries includes:Ghana – August 21st , Togo – August 25th, Kenya – September 1st,Nigeria-September 3rd, Côte d’Ivoire – September 8th, Niger – September 15th, Rwanda – September 17th and Chad – September 23rd.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Today’s data confirm the worst forecasts: Covid-19 is expanding relentlessly in the African continent, which has already accumulated more than one million cases registered in 47 countries and more than 20,000 deaths. In recent months there has been an exponential increase. Half of these cases (almost 560,000) correspond to South Africa, the epicenter of the pandemic on the continent and the fifth country in the world with the highest number of infected. It is followed far behind by countries such as Nigeria (46,577), Ghana (41,003), Algeria (35,214) and Kenya (26,928). Data up to the time of this publication.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of Nigeria’s Center for Disease Control (CDC)
In a previous article we argued with hope that resilience and African experience in epidemic management could be your best asset. However, the shortage of diagnostic tests and insufficient medical resources and health personnel appear to be undermining the success of Africa’s fight against the pandemic.
The relatively low number of coronavirus cases in Africa a few months ago had raised hopes that some countries would manage to rid themselves of the worst of the pandemic. In the end it was only a matter of time. Not even the most developed country knows for sure the total number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2. We only know the status of those who have been tested. This means that the count of confirmed cases depends on the number of tests a country performs. Rates of people tested (per 1,000 people) range from 148 in Iceland to 0.76 in India. In South Africa, as of May 3, 2020, the testing rate was 4.5. Without evidence there is no data.
If we look at the number of PCRs per country It is observed that there are places where the number of confirmed cases is high in relation to the number of tests performed. This suggests that the number of tests is insufficient to adequately monitor the pandemic. In these places, the number of real infected can be much higher than confirmed. Many of the African countries are in that category today. For example, the Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Togo. Last April Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of Nigeria’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), made a desperate call on Twitter for PCR testing in his country.
Against this background, the African Union launched an initiative called PACT (Partnership to Accelerate Testing in Africa) in which it undertook to supply, within a period of six months, 90 million diagnostic kits among member countries. Still, they may not be enough to stem the tide of COVID-19 on a continent with a population of 1.3 billion people. In fact, even with PACT resources, it is estimated that 25 million tests would still be missing for the continent to match the diagnostic capacity of many European countries.
In addition to PACT, the African scientific community is drawing on its international collaborations to increase its capabilities. Thanks to that diagnostic laboratories have already been set up in Uganda, Senegal and Ghana. However, WHO has doubts about the effectiveness of such tests, which do not always conform to international standards.
Although there is variability between African countries, in global terms only half of the population has access to primary care, and their health systems function at half their capacity. Among the challenges they face to increase its diagnostic capacity would be the installation of reference laboratories, the increase in health personnel and the self-supply of medical supplies.
In addition, due to the pandemic, international cooperation has been undermined. Countries like the United States are limiting access to medical supplies. The European Union has also urged member countries to limit the export of EPIS and possible drugs against covid-19. In April, John Nkengasong, director of the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Addis Ababa, wrote in Nature about how African countries are being excluded from the global market for diagnostic tests.
Collateral effects of covid-19 in Africa
To the impact of confinement in education, health systems, food security and the economy, is added the collateral effects that the coronavirus pandemic is having on health programs aimed at other diseases: tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS end every year with the lives of millions of people.
The Global Fund presented data from the first wave of the pandemic showing that 85% of HIV programs had been interrupted, 78% of those for tuberculosis and 73% for malaria. WHO warns that these disturbances mainly affect the campaigns for the provision of mosquito nets and access to antimalarials. Epidemiological models predict twice the number of malaria cases in sub-Saharan Africa in the coming years. This would take us back 20 years in the fight against the disease.
Our project, financed by the CSIC’s covid-19 fund and carried out in collaboration with institutions in Burkina Faso and Equatorial Guinea, aims to shed light on this question. On the one hand, contribute to the diagnosis of covid-19 by performing rapid serology tests and PCR tests. On the other, to estimate the incidence rates of malaria before and after the pandemic.
Elena Gómez Díaz, Researcher
Africa has to be part of the solution
Africa has extensive experience in managing health emergencies. There is a multilateral action (Africa Joint Continental Strategy for COVID-19 OUTBREAK) that coordinates efforts of African Union agencies and member countries, WHO and other partners, for surveillance, prevention and control.
However, Africa will also need funding to pay for vaccines and possible treatments, and to increase the number of local clinical trials. Despite the fact that the continent has the highest burden of disease worldwide – a quarter -, it only accounts for 2% of global clinical trials. Community clinical trial, driven by African Scientific Academy (AAS), aims to close this gap in clinical research.
A step forward in this regard is the participation of South Africa in the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine clinical trial. But to ensure access to the future vaccine, Africa has to be an integral part of clinical research against covid-19. Not just as mere subject’s research, but leading it. In the words of the writer, politician, feminist and anti-globalization activist Aminata Traore: “We are overflowing with potential and I rebel against the nature of the system and its ability to destroy hope in Africa.”
Elena Gómez Díaz is a Ramon y Cajal Researcher. Leader of a research group on epigenomics in malaria, López-Neyra Institute of Parasitology and Biomedicine (IPBLN-CSIC).
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Parents have gradually become teachers homeschooling their children, while children are forgetting what school feels like as Nigeria’s coronavirus cases continue to rise. It is now over four months since the government ordered the shutdown of schools to control the spread of the coronavirus. Academic sessions have been disrupted for students at primary, secondary, and university levels. The government and administrators expected the shutdown to be brief, enough to contain the spread of the virus and return to normal life.
Abubakar Idriss, writer at TechCabal
But this hasn’t happened.
Nigeria’s pandemic control measures are uncoordinated, leading to communal infections and an increasing number of confirmed cases. Although the country went under lockdown for over four weeks, it was largely ineffective as health authorities were unable to ramp up testing. Nigeria’s already poor population was unable to fully obey the lockdown rules as it temporarily ruined their sources of livelihood.
Government palliatives and relief funding were both inadequate and not evenly disbursed. The CBN’s COVID-19 relief fund for families and small businesses could not provide funding to many in these groups. The police charged to ensure peace was grossly incompetent and would later engage in extortion of motorists.
Between February 27, when Nigeria’s index case was discovered and June 1, the country recorded over 10,000 COVID-19 cases. At least 3,000 of them would later recover and be discharged. But between June and August 9, cases have escalated quadrupling to 46,577 total cases. Although recoveries have also increased and now stands at over 33,000. There are still over 12,000 active cases, and that number has continued to rise in August. Without a vaccine, there is little real chance of controlling the disease.
Out of school learning in-person learning and e-learning
In-person learning has been the biggest casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. While many businesses have gradually reopened as government control measures eased, many schools lack both the resources and the facilities to do so. Without in-person learning, the academic sessions of many primary, secondary, and tertiary schools have been disrupted. And this is taking a toll on their income.
Except for a few private schools, many secondary and primary school staff including teachers have not received pay since April. Some teachers have posted videos online pleading for financial assistance as they endure an uncertain period.
With schools closed, Nigeria risks increasing its population of out-of-school children, said Olanrewaju Oniyitan, an Obama fellow and the founder of Sustainable Education & Enterprise Development (SEED), a social impact project. According to UNICEF, 10.5 million children were out-of-school in 2018.
“There are fears that many young people will fall through the cracks, disappear from the school systems and become long-term victims of the emergency,” writes Ewan Watt, editor of Theirworld, a global children’s charity. The pandemic has had a crushing blow on income levels, increasing the chances that children in low-income families could join the workforce to supplement household income.
Yet for many parents, learning must go on. Over the last few months, schools have stepped up and began making frantic plans to maintain their academic calendars virtually. Private secondary schools were the first to go this route. Schools have developed e-learning systems to manage learning activities for their students during this period. Classes are conducted using Google Classrooms and Zoom.
The more tech-savvy families are turning to edtech solutions like uLessons, a subscription-based e-learning platform. Launched in February, uLessons has been downloaded over 250,000 times according to Quartz. Sim Shagaya, founder and CEO of the company, said paid subscribers have surged nearly 5x between March and August.
At the tertiary level, some universities, mostly private, have switched to e-learning since April. TechCabal can confirm that Babcock, Covenant, American University of Nigeria, Lagos State University, Crawford University, and Mountain Top University have all developed or embraced e-learning.
But the story is different for public-owned schools, including universities. Unlike their private counterparts, public schools have a higher number of students. A typical class could have over 100 students with many government-owned universities having up to 250 students in a class. Even for in-person learning, such classes are difficult to teach. It’s an even bigger challenge online.
A student at the Lagos State University (LASU) explained that the switch to eLearning has been challenging for both students and lecturers. For starters, devices like laptops and smartphones are expensive for millions of Nigerian families and other affordable devices have limited capabilities and could underperform when used with high tech websites.
Internet data is also expensive to afford for many. Although the average cost of 1GB of data in Nigeria is below ₦1,000 ($2.58), over 50% of Nigerians survive on less than $2 daily. And those who can afford internet data have to struggle with electricity problems, forcing them to go offline during lectures.
Government efforts to support schools
The government has also made several declarations, promising distant learning solutions for students. In April, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) was charged with the task of addressing some of these problems. The agency set up a committee to provide actionable plans. The committee recommended a partnership with telecom companies to introduce free access to educational websites and resources. Four months after the committee tabled its suggestions, NITDA has failed to act. It’s another way the government has failed its citizens.
In the meantime, the Federal Ministry of Education and some state governments have proposed low-tech solutions for learning. Among them are TV and radio educational programmes for students. The government and private organisations have distributed radios to families and children.
But these programmes are not designed for each class. They only provide generic content and the learning schedule is published on the government’s website and social media handles. “Everybody keeps asking how effective this is,” Olanrewaju Oniyitan, founder of educational impact project SEED told TechCabal. “For us, it is keeping the children engaged, keeping their brains running.”
These are short term measures. The core task is to understand how long schools will remain closed, then plan for their reopening in a coordinated manner.
“We need to start planning now for a catchup curriculum,” Oniyitan said. “If we sit down and we know that over the next six months schools cannot open when they do open, what is the catchup curriculum and requirements for re-opening.”
“If we assume they are not going to open in six months can we start letting them the things they need to get done,” she added.
Coordinating the reopening of Nigerian schools
But there is an apparent lack of coordination in the Nigerian government that is making planning difficult and could affect the possibilities of schools fully reopening in 2020.
The government has been unable to develop a coherent policy for the educational sector neither has it made serious efforts to assist struggling schools with relief funding. The most glaring lack of coordination is the contradictory stances of Nigeria’s Senior and Junior Ministers of Education on the reopening of schools.
On July 13, Nigeria’s junior Minister for Education announced that secondary and primary schools would be reopened for graduating students to write their exams. A few days later, the senior Minister of Education and a strong ally of the President insisted that schools will remain shut until the virus is contained.
A few weeks later, the Ministry of Education abandoned that policy, announcing it would reopen schools as planned for graduating students of only primary and secondary schools.
At the university level, the National University of Commission (NUC) is conducting a preparedness assessment of schools to understand if these institutions are fit to resume.
“We have a template to vice-chancellors of all universities requesting them to suggest to us what kind of protocols and strategies they are putting in place in the various institutions,” NUC’s Executive Secretary, Abubakar Rasheed, told reporters on August 4. “We are collating some of the responses which have already started coming in and at the end of the day the picture should emerge about the extent to which our universities are prepared to reopen for academic activities.”
But with no vaccine in sight, the full reopening of schools could be risky.
University and boarding school students would have to travel long distances to return to their schools. It won’t be a fun experience. Nigeria’s transportation system is notoriously cramped as vehicles are filled — sometimes beyond the capacity — and passenger luggage is squeezed into the extent that there is poor ventilation in the bus. That is a health challenge for a country witnessing a highly contagious pandemic.
In South Africa, schools were allowed to reopen in June after the country’s nine-week lockdown. By late July, schools were forced to close after 775 learning facilities recorded viral cases.
Ghana also recorded new cases after the schools reopened. On July 13, 55 cases were discovered in the Accra Girls Senior High School. Also, “a few other schools have reported sporadic cases which have not experienced a surge,” the government said at the time. However, it has no plans to close schools in the country.
In East Africa, the Kenyan government has cancelled the rest of the school year. It announced that schools will only reopen in January 2021, a stretched date designed to avoid any hasty reopening in 2020.
With Nigeria’s rising cases, will the government consider cancelling the rest of the 2020 school year?
Abubakar Idriss writes for TechCabal. This article was first published in TechCabal.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The crash in the price of petroleum products occasioned by decline in demands which predates the Covid-19 pandemic is having a huge negative impact on the Algerian economy according to economists. Economists are warning that large scale intervention is needed to rescue the Algerian economy from accruing huge foreign debt, following the double blow of COVID 19 and tumbling oil revenues. The National Office of Statistics reported a 3.9 percent fall in Gross Domestic Product in the first quarter of 2020 alone, with unemployment nearing 15%.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune
Finance Minister Aymen Benabderrahmane has estimated the losses of state-owned enterprises at over one and a quarter billion US dollars. These have been described as ‘alarming’ figures, according to Mansour Kedidir, associate professor at the Higher School of Economics in Oran. He has urged authorities to introduce lower interest rates and tax cuts based on the number of new jobs created. Professor Kedidir also called for major projects such as agro-industrial zones in the country’s desert south, with processing infrastructure, extended railways lines and new towns to service them, all built with local manpower.
Kedidir predicts that otherwise, a “Pandora’s box will be opened” accompanied by “riots, irredentism, religious extremism”. Economist Abderahmane Mebtoul also called for drastic action. While acknowledging that hydrocarbons will remain the main revenue source for the next 5-10 years, he insisted that an end to the economic crisis must involve new national and decentralised governance to “bring together all political, economic and social forces… (and) avoid division on secondary issues.”
Mebtoul appealed for “a state-citizen symbiosis involving elected officials, companies, banks, universities and civil society in order to fight against a paralysing bureaucracy”.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast that Algeria’s economy will shrink by 5.2 percent this year. In April, the organisation approved US$3.4 billion worth of emergency financial assistance to Nigeria to support the government’s efforts in dealing with the same problems Algeria faces: the double impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sharp fall in oil prices. But Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has already ruled out seeking loans from the IMF or other international financial bodies, to preserve what he described as “national sovereignty”.
Algeria has painful memories of its 1994 deal with the IMF, which meant a structural adjustment plan resulting in massive job cuts, shutdowns and privatisations. The government has said that it will launch an economic recovery plan and already decided at the start of May to halve the state’s operating budget.
The president has insisted that the economic plan will preserve the social characteristics of the country and protect the purchasing power of citizens, especially the most vulnerable groups.President Tebboune has also said he is confident that Algeria’s financial capacity is sufficient to implement the plan.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
