The President, African Development Bank, AfDB, has warned that more aid 39 million Africans are at risk of falling into extreme poverty this year.
The AfDB, President, Akinwumi Adesina gave the warning while, calling for debt relief as the continent suffers from the coronavirus pandemic:
In a recent exclusive interview on CNN’s First Move with Julia Chatterley, Adesina said “Africa is not looking for a free pass. We’re just looking for a way in which Africa’s fiscal space gets dealt with.”
The African Development Bank’s (AfDB) economic outlook also warned on the worrying figures, “The GDP of Africa went down by $175 billion. Last year, we had 30 million people went into extreme poverty. This year if that trend continues, 39 million people are going into extreme poverty, hunger and all of that.”
Adesina cautioned that the economic outlook was not all bad news, but that any positives rely on access to vaccinations. He told Chatterley, “We project that Africa will grow back. We project 3.4% grow back this year, but all of that is conditional on two things, one is access to vaccines, secondly the issue of debt.” He continued, “I think that’s important to improve access of Africa to vaccines. We need to have vaccine solidarity, COVAX is doing a great job but the amounts are still minuscule as far as we are concerned.”
Adesina also stressed the need for global cooperation to end the pandemic, “If we deal with this pandemic in one part of the world, and we don’t deal with other parts of the world, we’re all going back to square one.”
