Browsing: McKinsey

martin.mwita Transforming agriculture Africa

Investing in Agriculture: Transforming Africa’s Food Industry

Investing
  • The continent spends over USD60 billion yearly on food imports that it could generate domestically.
  • African countries have allocated large sums to agriculture, but according to experts, this is insufficient.
  • As a result, countries are experiencing deficits even as governments continue to spend billions of dollars bolstering their military defenses, which fuels conflict, displacement, and hunger.
In a study utilizing satellite data from NASA’s Landsat, researchers from the universities of Maryland and Texas in the United States cast doubt on the rapid development of cultivated land in Africa.

It was previously recorded that Africa’s agricultural area has expanded by more than a third during thepast two decades (2000-2019), accounting for 52 percent of the global increase, or 102 million hectares.

The continent is said to contain around one-fourth of the world’s agricultural land but millions of people continue to face malnutrition as dry and semi-arid regions are devastated by drought.

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Global inflation risks and economic trends paint grim picture

Investing

McKinsey’s report notes that the wages of consumers are steadily being eroded. Wages in the largest economies reportedly flatlined; in other words, no significant change in their levels was recorded. Prior to the pandemic, the same wages were said to have increased, giving workers the upper hand in negotiations. The pandemic, however, drastically altered that state of affairs. Wages in developed markets post the pandemic are also related, but the advent of inflation has checked that growth and, in some instances, set the trend backwards.

In the United Kingdom, there have been reports of wages being lower year on year.

The culmination of these factors is that the outlook for global economic growth will be lower this year than last. McKinsey expects central banks to increase interest rates more assertively to deal with inflationary pressure. The risk of recession is becoming more and more prevalent.…

COVID-19 in Africa:  150 million jobs threatened by a virus, McKinsey says

Countries

Africa, the world’s second-fastest-growing region might drive a third of 440 it’s formal and informal workers in unemployment, as the region rolls in lockdowns that sweep away people’s means to earn their income, according to McKinsey.

As the virus threats keep on taking new shapes, Mckinsey Finding Africa’s Path report entails that report, between 9 million and 18 million of Africa’s 140 human capital informal sector could lose their jobs.

The report also noted that a further 30 million to 35 million could see a reduction in wages and working hours, as one hundred million of the 300 million informal jobs in Africa are at risk.

Already the virus has hurt other decent-paying and highly labour concentrated sectors in the region such as manufacturing, retail and wholesale, tourism, and construction, as jobs of more than half of the workforce could be lost, the report highlighted.

The virus which has already …