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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...
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COVID-19’s poor legacy: The pandemic pushed 55 million people into poverty in 2020. That’s more than the total number of people pushed into poverty in the entire 20 years prior to 2020. In Africa alone, another 58 million people could fall into poverty, with women more likely to be affected.
Future focused: Senegal President Macky Sall called for a united African vision for restructuring the international system at this year’s Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (CoM2022). Conference discussions centred on...
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. Today, Thursday, 12 May, Belize, Germany, Indonesia, Senegal, and the US co-host the Second Global COVID-19 Summit. In this special edition, we take stock of where we are in the pandemic. Spoiler alert: The world wants to be done with COVID, but the virus is far from done with us.
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Vaccination apartheid: The summit takes...
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A slow TRIPS: A draft TRIPS proposal for COVID vaccines is (finally) before the WTO, a leisurely 18 months after it was originally proposed. ⏳ Despite being heralded as an agreement between the EU, India, South Africa, and the US, only the EU has indicated support publicly. The proposal will now go to the WTO’s 164 members for consideration. It notably excludes important pandemic-fighting tools like therapeutics and diagnostics.
Resolve to save profits: Scientists in Egypt, Ghana, and Uganda are working around patent restrictions...
Whoever wins Kenya’s presidential election in August will have to immediately manage the country’s skyrocketing debt and growing food insecurity. Officials at the Treasury have already sounded the alarm on the huge debt burden in Kenya. Last month, Treasury officials announced that the cost of servicing the national debt has surpassed the government’s recurrent expenditure for the first time in the country’s history.
Treasury figures show that Kenya will spend 1.36 trillion Kenya shillings ($11.8 billion) in debt repayments annually starting in...
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, we look at progress on a malaria vaccine, the not-so-good records broken at the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings, Africa’s role in a new vision of global finance, and more.
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Default tip of the iceberg: Hunger and blackouts are the immediate symptoms of global economic fallouts, which will see growth stall at 3.6% in 2022...
Humanitarian organizations and religious leaders are criticizing the controversial deal to relocate migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers from the UK to Rwanda. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said there were “serious ethical questions” about sending refugees and asylum-seekers abroad, while the Office of the United High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the deal violates international law and international refugee conventions because it outsources refugee assistance to a third country.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on the other hand, defended his government’s policy, saying Rwanda’s...
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Seismic waves: Russia’s war in Ukraine is going to weaken the economies of 143 countries this year — that’s 86% of the world — driven by rising food and energy prices. Likening the war to “seismic waves” rolling over the global economy, the IMF lowered its global growth projections from an estimated 6.1% in 2021 to 3.6% in 2022 and 2023 (and 3.8% for sub-Saharan Africa in 2022, see chart below). This could lead to greater risk of violence from heightened economic tensions in...
In the South African townships of Gqeberha, communities confront challenges on their way to success. They encounter high unemployment rates, lack of access to quality education, and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. And these challenges are exacerbated due to COVID-19.
The Eastern Cape, the province home to Gqeberha, has the highest unemployment rate in South Africa, a staggering 47.1%. Unlike its Western Cape neighbor, the Eastern Cape is a rural region. It’s far behind in the country’s fight for equal...
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Breaking news (and norms): The IMF endorsed the creation of the Resilience and Sustainability Trust as a new mechanism to recycle its emergency pandemic-recovery funds, or Special Drawing Rights. This landmark innovation should enable low-income countries to access much-needed cash to help mitigate the economic impacts of COVID-19 (and now the war in Ukraine). But there’s a big “if”: Rich countries need to contribute SDRs to the trust. The IMF is hoping to raise at least $45 billion. African leaders have...