Browsing: COVID-19

Oil prices have plummeted heralding a tough time ahead- at least in the foreseeable near future- for oil exporters in Africa.

The chaos started when Saudi Arabia and Russia disagreed over production cuts leading to the oil price war which has led to the huge oil price drops the last of which were witnessed the 1991 Gulf War.

This tiff came after Russia refused to cut production as requested by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) due to the reduced oil demand occasioned by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. With Saudi Arabia retaliating, the world is now experiencing the biggest drop in oil prices to around $30 per barrel.

Africa’s most affected sectors, hope for survival

While this is happening miles away from Africa, oil exporters on the continent have not been spared. Nigeria and Angola are particularly affected with their economies registering the negative effects of the slump …

African countries should support each other if they are to bounce back fast after the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic which has paralysed the global economy.

The continent has immense wealth in resources including labour thus it can easily achieve economic freedoms without having to rely on aid.

With technology, Africa can also easily jumpstart its economy since the tried and tested methods which can support industries and agriculture among other sectors are easily available. Home-grown solutions for local problems are also easily accessible.

With the launch of the operationalisation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) likely to be pushed from the July 1 date, the continent will have to wait longer to see the impact of opened borders and the free movement of goods between countries.

Intra-regional trade could create 2 million new jobs for East Africa

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has underscored the need for African countries to …

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is calling for debt deal for developing nations in face of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

UNCTAD, in a report titled From the Great Lockdown to the Great Meltdown: Developing Country Debt in the Time of Covid-19, notes that the virus outbreak came at a time when developing economies have already been struggling with unsustainable debt burdens for many years.

Coronavirus: African leaders stuck with neglected, outdated healthcare systems

The report notes that if the challenges are huge in advanced economies, they are enormously more daunting in developing economies.

“While advanced country governments struggle to revamp administrative and regulatory frameworks and to break ideological taboos, developing countries cannot easily flatten the contagion curve by closing down their largely informal economies without facing the prospect of more people dying from starvation than from the Covid-19 illness. Moreover, even the most advanced high-income developing …

The global digital evolution has just been put into overdrive by the covid-19 coronavirus as locked-down nations are forced to accelerate the shift online, driving a massive spike in data needs.

Microsoft Teams has reached 44 million daily users and Zoom users exploded to 200 million in March from a 10 million previous maximum, as the share price rocketed 41 per cent over 2 months since February 16, 2020.

Matthew Renshaw, Chief Operating Officer of pan-African construction solutions company Profica, says that as businesses and even entire economies play rapid catch-up, the current pandemic challenge is throwing the need for local infrastructure to provide rapid, high-availability data centre services in Africa into sharp relief.

Tanzania’s coming of atomic age

“Countries across the African continent now have to leapfrog when it comes to evolving technologies and we will continue to see rapid growth in data-hungry new technologies, including the accelerated roll-out …

A WFP projection shows that some 265 million people in low and middle-income countries will be in acute food insecurity by the end of 2020. This is unless swift action is taken to ensure that food security is guaranteed.

Ironically, a majority of people who suffered acute food insecurity in 2019 were in countries affected by conflict at 77 million, climate change affected 34 million while economic crises hit 24 million people hard according to the Global Report on Food Crises.

In Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, the Sudan and Nigeria are among 10 countries globally that constituted the worst food crises in 2019.

Starvation, death threaten Horn of Africa stability

61 per cent of South Sudan’s population was in a state of food crisis while the Central African Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe had at least 35 per cent of their populations in a state …

When restrictions of movements were announced by different countries due to the Coronavirus pandemic, many people with perennial need of non-COVID-19 medication felt disenfranchised. Also, the fear of receiving non-certified medicine and other medical supplies has increased over this period.

In Kenya, the ministry of health has sent a warning to Kenyans to be wary of fake medical materials including recycled masks and non-effective sanitizers which they feel are putting the citizens under great risk.  Estimates from World Health Organisation (WHO) show that about 274 deaths occur every day in Africa as a result of fake medication.

To continue offering quality medicine in this period, the only registered e-pharmacy in Kenya, MYDAWA has been aiding in the delivery of quality medicine in times of restricted movement.  As the world battles with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, one company is applying the use of technology to get essential medication and health supplies …

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 195 million people around the world will be jobless in the next 90 days (3 months) said a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

International Labour Organisation estimates that almost 38 per cent of the global workforce which represents 1.25 billion workers are employed in sectors such as accommodation, food services, manufacturing and retail trade that are facing a severe decline in output and a high risk of unemployment.

Wholesale and retail segments have the biggest share of workers with 482 million workers who are lowly paid and unprotected while the most affected sector accommodation and food services account for 144 million workers.

According to the ILO report, the food and accommodation sector is suffering from almost full closure in some countries.

The manufacturing sector employs 463 million workers has also been greatly affected by the pandemic with factories closed, workers asked …

Beyond the COVID-19, the food and agriculture landscape in Africa will change because of the pandemic in terms of processing and value addition, agri-food e-commerce among others according to a report by Selina Wamucii

The report titled “Impact of COVID–19 on Africa’s Agriculture: What the Coronavirus (COVID–19) Means for African Family Farmers and Fishermen”, shows how the food and agricultural landscape across Africa will be shaped by new developments in the future.

   1. Processing and Value Addition

According to the report, due to the COVID-19 pandemic most countries supply chain got interrupted with boarders closing among others, therefore, to ensure this does not happen again in case of another pandemic, countries will seek to reduce reliance on cross-border imports mostly on food and have control of their food own production.

With the closed borders, African countries that export raw and unprocessed fresh produce to other markets have been affected greatly …

By Julia Greenland – CEO, In Their Hands

Living in Africa, I have watched the explosion of COVID 19 in Asia, Europe and America like a horror movie. We watched as country after country introduced social distancing measures too late and thousands of cases emerge. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking – what will happen when it reaches us, with our small number of ventilators and millions without running water?

So, like everyone else, I have been relieved to see East Africa’s governments respond quickly – closing schools, limiting entry and restricting movement.

Yes, we are doing the right things, implementing preventative measures – but we must be prepared for the unexpected consequences of CODIV 19. After all this isn’t the first time African countries have faced widespread school closures and an economic slow down due to an outbreak.

In Sierra Leone, a UNDP study found a …

By Eric Osiakwan

When I postulated the digital economy in Africa in 2013 as a precursor to becoming a fulltime angel investor and subsequently writing about its KINGS in 2016, it never crossed my mind that in 2020 COVID-19 would be the SPEEDING agent. Who could have predicted COVID-19 except Bill Gates who alluded to a viral outbreak in his 2015 TED talk whiles George Bush and Barack Obama were more accurate in prospecting 2020 as the year? However, none of them envisaged the extent of this epidemic which has pretty much collapsed the capital markets and slowed down the economies of many countries with many of us at home – literally trying to survive the pandemic.

Policy action
African leaders took the major decision to declare a lockdown and, in some cases, daily curfews for fear of the virus spreading and overwhelming the (in some cases non-existent) healthcare …