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Upending lending: Despite federal troops and rebels in Ethiopia having declared a truce in the 1.5 year-long civil war in Tigray, lenders are scaling back. Disbursements from public and private banks are down by nearly 75%, from $3.1 billion in 2019-20 to under $775 million in the first nine months of the current fiscal year, with a growing budget deficit. This comes as aid is desperately needed: the conflict, paired with severe drought, has caused over 2.6 million...
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Feeling charitable: Pfizer will provide patents on a not-for-profit basis for new and existing medicines and vaccines available in the US or EU to 45 lower-income countries. Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda are first in line to join the “Accord for a Healthier World”, announced at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos. The accord currently includes 23 medicines and vaccines that treat infectious diseases, some cancers, as well as rare and inflammatory diseases. It’s a...
Did you know that by the end of 2020, sub-Saharan region of Africa had up to 495 million mobile service subscribers? That’s 46% of the region’s population, and is an increase of almost 20 million from 2019.
And children under the age of 15, who account for 40% of the region’s population, are using mobile technology to connect with others and have conversations in real-time.
So how does this connect to our work? Well, we’re going mobile. ONE in Africa has...
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Bounce back bias: Low-income countries’ GDP would have been more than 5% higher in 2021 if they had been able to access vaccines at the same rates as high-income countries. The vaccination of one additional person out of every 100 would have boosted global GDP by 0.10%, according to modeling by the UNDP. While the COVID-19 vaccines have helped high-income countries economically, the growth outlook for low-income countries continues to trend downwards and is 10 times lower than that of upper-middle-income countries.
History...
Nearly 4 out of 10 Kenyans have been unable to pay rent since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report by the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). This is a more than five-fold increase from pre-pandemic figures, which showed that less than 1 in 10 Kenyans could not afford to pay rent on time.
A majority (60.8%) of households struggled with rent because of reduced incomes. One-quarter blame layoffs and business closures. More than one-third...
A roundup of the latest news, stats, and analysis of COVID-19’s impact in Africa. View our data tracker and sign up for our weekly newsletter. This week, war in Ethiopia has killed an estimated half a million people, global food aid supplies dwindle, Russia seeks to counter NATO through African alliances, and a provisional TRIPs deal has entered the chat.
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Knocking on famine’s door: Half a million people have died in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia since the war started...
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Looming food crisis: Russia’s war against Ukraine is causing daily human tragedy inside the country. Experts warn that the war could soon have devastating impacts in far away places due to rising food prices and shortages. The World Food Programme, which gets half of the wheat it distributes in humanitarian crises from Ukraine, may need to find other suppliers. 44 million people globally are on the brink of famine and an additional 232 million are just one step behind. And...
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Face saving or life-saving?: BioNTech announced the launch of not-for-profit (aka at-cost), movable vaccine factories to scale up mRNA vaccine production in Africa and other regions with low vaccine rates. The modules, enclosed in shipping containers and described as a “turnkey solution,” are capable of producing up to 50 million vaccines per year. The first units will be shipped to Rwanda and Senegal (and possibly South Africa), with a fill-and-finish role for Ghana. Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo welcomed the news, thanking “BioNTech and...
Abuja – ONE Campaign welcomes the election of Senegal President Macky Sall, as the new African Union chairperson. President Macky Sall will serve as the AU chair until 2023. He begins his tenure as Africa experiences bouts of democratic backsliding, subdued economic outlook and massive job losses driven by covid-19 pandemic and a vaccination drive that has only seen 10% of the total population vaccinated against covid-19.
Speaking on behalf of the non-profit, ONE in Africa Executive Director Edwin Ikhuoria said: “We...
A roundup of the latest news, stats, and analysis of COVID-19’s impact in Africa. View our data tracker and sign up for our weekly newsletter. This week, up to 80% of South Africans have had COVID-19, eye-popping levels of healthcare waste, and a mental health crisis born of the pandemic.
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Don’t know, can’t tell: South Africa has scrapped quarantine for asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and cut quarantine times to seven days for symptomatic cases. That policy change stemmed from new...