A community member receiving treatment at Primary Health Centre (PHC) in Daura, Yobe State, constructed and equipped by UNDP with Japanese fund, 5 October 2022. Credit: UNDP

By Ahunna Eziakonwa
TOKYO, Japan, Aug 23 2023 (IPS)

At this year’s G7 summit in Japan, global leaders emphasized the importance of unity as the world navigates grave threats to multilateralism. The message was clear – trusted global platforms for dialogue and solutions are extremely crucial in current times.

They are right. More than ever before, effective multilateralism is needed to tackle the polycrisis and to create the world we want: one in which there is prosperity for all.

Thirty years ago, The Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), was launched as a multi-stakeholder forum for Japan and Africa to deepen collaboration, with the facilitation of partners like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

UNDP is proud to be associated with TICAD – not least for it unique in its ability to tackle a wide – range of key issues of critical interest to Africa – like investment, skills training and technology transfer.

Since inception, TICAD’s investments in both aid and investment to Africa extend over the $100 billion mark. In the last three years alone, Japan has implemented 69 projects across Africa.

Ahunna Eziakonwa

Today, we see regression – with COVID, growing conflict in some parts of Africa, and a cost-of-living crisis triggered by the impact of the war in Ukraine.

The challenges Africa faces today affect global prospects for attaining the SDGs, and put into sharp focus the criticality of effective partnerships. If we are to rescue the SDGs in Africa, we need to invest in opportunities that are foundational to accelerating Africa’s development.

So what is smart investment in Africa today?

It is all about investing in people. In less than ten years, 42 per cent of the world’s youth will live in Africa – and if the continent invests smartly, its young teeming innovators can create technology – led solutions to drive socioeconomic progress.

To secure a bright and prosperous future in Africa, Japan and UNDP are working together to invest in Africa’s people. This breadth stretches from support for inclusive governance, to ensuring women and youth are empowered, to social sectors like health and education.

In Nigeria, over 1000 young people in the conflict affected regions of the North-East and Middle Belt received an 8-week training on community – driven trade, and cash grants to help them set up new businesses. In Kenya and South Africa, young men and women participated in job skills training for car manufacturing in collaboration with Toyota Motor Corporation.

And in The Central African Republic, income generating activity groups were established, offering training in financial independence across sectors such as retail and animal husbandry. This initiative utilized the 5S-Kaizen methodology through a partnership with JICA. Japan’s support to UNDP’s Liptako Gourma Stabilization Facility has resulted in over 3000 women and youth benefitting from cross-border trade infrastructure and increased incomes for highly vulnerable borderland communities.

Literacy Training at Koudoukou Elementary School in the 3rd arrondissement of Bangui. Credit: UNDP Central African Republic, Arsène Christ NGOUMBANGO NZABE

Investing in green growth and trade

As the continent continues to chart its development pathway, with a strong vote for industrialization and diversification, the importance of advanced technological expertise is elevated. The new generation of development partnerships with Africa must frontload technology transfer including on a commercial basis – in areas of agriculture, health, education, energy transitions and smart cities.

A prime illustration is Japan’s Green Growth Initiative with Africa, which promotes green economics and support to just energy transitions with African ownership at the core.

Development of local industries and regional value chains will promote Africa’s industrialization – which both COVID 19 and the war in Ukraine have demonstrated – are key tenets of not just effective but also responsible partnerships.

A recent investment report by UNDP identified 157 SDG investment opportunities across 31 industries in Africa with significant financial and impact potential. The industries range from food and beverage to infrastructure, health care, renewable resources and alternative energy.

These investments now have an even larger network of markets – thanks to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – the world’s largest trade zone by number of participating countries and geographical coverage.

The Japan – UNDP partnership has proven its worth in stepping into areas of development acceleration. As Africa stands at a critical inflection point, a vital window of opportunity exists to unlock the continent’s full potential – making Africa’s resources work for its people’s development. Now is the time for to step up the partnership. Now is the time to unlock Africa’s promise.

Read more about UNDP’s Renewed Strategic Offer in Africa ( Africa’s promise) here.

Ahunna Eziakonwa is Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa, UNDP

The Republic of Congo received just over 300,000 doses of the COVID vaccines through the COVAX Facility in August 2021. Credit: UNICEF/Aimable Twiringiyima

By Ahunna Eziakonwa
NEW YORK, Dec 21 2021 (IPS)

We are about to start a third year of living with COVID-19. The world’s humanity and solidarity are now at a further test – and yet implications of the absence of solidarity keep us all in the boat of mutations, lockdowns, quarantines and delayed SDGs – denied prosperity for all. 2021 has unearthed a new expression of global inequity: “vaccine nationalism” – itself competing with high with socioeconomic downturns, jobless growth, the climate crisis, and rising poverty.

As the pandemic ravages on, with Omicron on the scene, the futility of hoarding takes centre stage as even the heavy supply of boosters in advanced economies has not shielded them from the vicious cycle of pandemic-living. While about 60 per cent of the population in the US and 76 per cent of that in Canada are fully vaccinated, in Africa – a continent home to 1.3 billion people – the number barely reaches 8 per cent. Many have argued that vaccines’ short shelf life, hesitancy and logistic

The world’s humanity and solidarity are now at its further test – and yet the implications of the absence of solidarity keep us all in the boat of mutations, lockdowns, quarantines and delayed SDGs – denied prosperity for all. 2021 has unearthed a new expression of global inequity: “vaccine nationalism” – which itself competes high with socioeconomic downturns, jobless growth, the climate crisis, and rising poverty.

Vaccine inequality is also manifesting in terms of affordability. For high income countries to vaccinate 70 per cent of their population, it will take raising their health care spending by 0.8 per cent. Lower income countries must increase health care spending by over 50 per cent, on average – to do the same.

Vaccines delayed is development denied. Estimates show that vaccine delays cost Africa up to $14 billion in lost productivity each month – making recovery more challenging, and dragging out the first-in-a-generation recession the continent is facing.

African governments have responded quickly to contain the spread of the virus – but success is overshadowed by the pandemic’s socioeconomic consequences. In 2019, Africa was witnessing record growth numbers in various sectors: like tourism; where the continent had the second-fastest growing tourism sector in the world, contributing 8.5 per cent of Africa’s GDP.

However, with the pandemic, tourism has come to a standstill. Africa recorded a 2.1 per cent decline in economic growth in 2020, with other accompanying challenges including general exchange rates depreciations, food insecurity and increased job losses.

Vaccine delays will cost Sub-Saharan Africa 3 per cent of the region’s forecast GDP in 2022-25. UNDP research reveals that recovery rates are strongly correlated to capacity to vaccinate – with a $7.93 billion increase in global GDP for every million people vaccinated. Low-income countries that are severely impacted by the pandemic do not have the fiscal and financial leeway available to wealthy countries.

They risk enduring the pandemic longer if they do not gain early access to COVID-19 vaccines. This places an inordinate burden on national budgets at a time when the pandemic has decimated fiscal revenues and when higher spending is needed from governments to protect their people and cushion the socioeconomic shock caused by the pandemic.

There is a risk of seeing African countries’ budget deficits widen and it is urgent for us to support countries in developing alternative financing sources. Vaccine famine is putting millions at risk of infection, constraining economic productivity and jeopardizing socioeconomic progress.

The key question today is: Can the world afford such blatant inequality in the face of a pandemic that is sparing no region?

The path to recovery will remain long and uncertain unless we take urgent measures to overhaul the current system of vaccine production, distribution, and financing. Below are some ideas on how to get there fast – building on a consensus that emerged from the recently concluded African Economic Conference in Sal, Cabo Verde.

• Development financing in Africa requires an out – of – the – box architecture. Africa will need an additional $425 billion in external funding between now and 2025 to fully recover from the pandemic. It is daunting, but not impossible. It is equivalent to the amount African countries lose to illicit financial flows over a five-year period. Economic governance and creativity can also be applied, by, for instance, re-directing investments by pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and similar institutions.

• Leveraging the continent’s natural resources is urgent. Africa’s financial presence in the international system does not reflect its real wealth. Better management and use of extractive industries is critical. Resources like energy, oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium are worth between $13-14.5 trillion of potential wealth. Further resources can also be harnessed from production in six key sectors: agriculture, water, fisheries, forestry, tourism and human capital. Mobilization of these resources requires governments seriously addressing deficiencies in banking and governance systems to stem illicit financial flows out of Africa. Central banks have a key role to play in unlocking idle resources and channeling them into productive investments. Over $1 trillion of excess reserves could be used to finance Africa’s development.

• International finance systems could be reviewed to become more equitable. Concessional financing should consider countries’ multidimensional vulnerabilities beyond what is reflected in their income levels. The allocation of a record amount of $650 billion SDR issued by the IMF to its member countries in August 2021 is a step in the right direction. But more can be done to better support countries that need financing the most. Africa only received $21 billion of SDRs from the total envelope. Such international mechanisms could be reviewed to redress current inequalities.

• Reforming Africa’s financial system. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical role that financial systems have to play in supporting Africa’s development. Improvements in the quality, quantity and efficiency of financial systems are crucial for Africa’s sustainable development. More effective financial systems across the continent can promote resource mobilization and better allocation of savings to productive investments by shifting incentives for the banking system toward the core functions and advancing financial inclusion for individuals and microenterprises.

• Digital innovations are a game changer for Africa’s development financing. Financial systems that harness digital technologies and free and fair competition will be fundamental in revitalizing African economies. The pandemic has proven that digital technologies present enormous opportunities for Africa. They stimulate innovation, economic growth, and job creation in critical economic sectors by allowing better interconnection of African markets with the rest of the world. They can also increase market access and financing for the marginalized population usually excluded by the formal financial systems. However, digitization also has the potential to exacerbate inequalities and we must ensure that the means are sufficiently inclusive for no one to be left behind.

• Sustainable financing will be key. African financial institutions have a role to play in enabling Africa to transform its natural resources advantages, by leveraging blue-carbon markets, and green financing mechanisms. Climate risk-sensitive investment, de-risking, impact investment, environmentally sustainable projects, and sustainable energy investment are among the critical issues for sustainable financing development. Thus, the financial sector can contribute by re-orienting investments towards more sustainable technologies and businesses and fostering low-carbon, climate-resilient, and circular economies.

• Boosting intra-African trade is a gateway to recovery. The transformative power of the AfCFTA must be brought to bear in servicing the needs of 1.3 billion people. If effectively implemented, the AfCFTA will accelerate the continent’s path towards structural economic transformation through value – addition – based industrialization of both goods and services. Investment in trade facilitation reforms and using Regulations as a Stimulus (RaaS) will bring even greater dividends, saving governments money in efficiencies while placing billions directly in the hands of intra-African women and youth – led exporting enterprises.

2022 must be a year where collective global action prioritizes vaccine equity and ensures a shot for all. Omicron has reminded us that there is just no other way to build forward better.

Ahunna Eziakonwa is UN Assistant-Secretary General, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Regional Bureau for Africa Director.

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Economic activity in Benin. Credit: @UNDPBenin

By Ahunna Eziakonwa
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2020 (IPS)

1 July 2020 was supposed to be the official date to start trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). It was a much-anticipated follow up to the 2019 African Union Summit, that launched the operational phase of the AfCFTA in a colorful ceremony in Niamey – Niger.

The world was watching as Africa purposely marched on in its drive for integration.

We had grown accustomed to the projections – that intra-African trade – standing at about 18 per cent (in 2019) – will double by 2040.

We knew the projections were an understatement – for their focus on trade in goods alone – amidst a highly informal African marketplace, of thriving but un-captured trade at borderlands, and a vibrant services sector.

And so, we started to look at bringing the promise to life. At UNDP, based on consultations with key stakeholders, thanks to our presence on the ground in 54 African countries, we focused on enabling environments and productive capacities for women and youth as a central piece of our Renewed Strategic Offer in Africa – shaping a signature initiative on women and youth in the AfCFTA.

We, like others, were exuberant about Africa’s promise that was expected to be leapfrogged by the machinery of boosted intra-African trade.

COVID 19 has set this back – not the promise, but the start of trading. This, for many reasons, not least the unfinished negotiation business on rules of origin and the still-to-be exchanged offers for preferential treatment that will be the basis for new trading arrangements.

We have seen demand for Africa’s commodity exports plummet, and their prices tumble. We have seen global and regional supply chains break – causing fear for food insecurity and critically needed medical supplies.

Ahunna Eziakonwa. Credit: UNDP

But it is precisely COVID 19 that must impress on us the sense of urgency to accelerate implementation of the AfCFTA. Africa’s place in global value chains requires critical upgrade – from the export of raw materials and low-processed goods, to higher value – added products.

COVID 19 has shown that production value chains structured around extraction must now give way to approaches that privilege diversified industrialization on the continent, to promote structural transformation in Africa.

And this is not just economic orthodoxy. It is central to development policy – that Africa’s resources (that are the raw materials for many of the world’s most prosperous industries) can and must form the basis for an industrial drive within Africa, crowding in Africans: women and youth – into decent jobs, thereby promoting inclusive growth and sustainable development in Africa.

No nation has broken the poverty trap without creating jobs in productive sectors. Africa’s productive sectors – agriculture, industry, services, and the digital economy, should be supported to create products for local, regional, and global markets.

So, what has changed?

COVID 19 has demonstrated Africa’s ingenuity and surfaced the footprints of the productive capacity we long sought. Necessity has birthed innovation – from Ghana’s hand sanitizers, to Rwanda’s facemasks – and similar production all across Africa, to ventilators in Kenya, to testing kits in Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire.

These inventions were literally unimaginable in the pre – COVID 19 environment.

The power of a mindset and a narrative can change a reality. COVID 19 allows us to embrace the reality that ingenuity is distributed in equal measure. If there is a silver lining out of COVID 19’s stormy clouds, it is that Africa can – industrialize.

There is an important role for trade policy in ensuring that such mindset shifts take place, and that new stories of jobs for women and youth in trade, gain momentum.

For the development professional, the challenge is how to nurture this footprint – to ensure that it was not just a passing phase. The goal must be to support scaling up of what is evidence of a proven concept (which has a ready market in the new-normal COVID 19 economy). This can be done in at least six ways:

• • Creating capacity to meet regulatory safety and technical standards, to ensure that products can access local, regional, and global markets.

• • Investments in renewable energy to power Africa’s industrial base.

• • Availing financing to oil the machinery of production in Africa.

• • Adopting incentivizing tax structures, including holidays, that provide room for SMEs and non-formal economy players to grow.

• • Establishing centres of learning and excellence where skills can be honed to produce at high standards.

• Using government procurement to provide markets to the products of women and youth.

The overarching architecture of enabling environments is the business of governments. Investing in measures to facilitate trade within and at borders will need to become a top priority of Africa’s strategies to resuscitate economies from the development reversal occasioned by COVID 19.

Speaking to innovators and producers about the support they need to get ahead, is essential in zoning in on how their footprint can be scaled, so that models used for capacity building respond to those specific needs, even where it calls for getting off the beaten track.

Investing in agriculture, services and the digital economy is inescapable, as the pandemic has laid bare the risks of not doing so.

Amidst broken global supply chains and export bans, Africa has been forced to fill the gap. Scientists, research institutions, women entrepreneurs and young people have stepped up to the plate to provide homegrown solutions that are working well in context.

And while questions remain as to whether these are firmly rooted green shoots of recovery, the answer lies in what African governments do in responding to this footprint.

Investing in the new wave of African entrepreneurs scores on the twin objective of resuscitating incomes and livelihoods, while preparing the body of products that would find markets in the AfCFTA.

We must read and write about these innovations. Even more, we must recognize and lift them up – targeting them for programme support – and ensuring that they become part of Africa’s development 2.0 model.

While COVID 19 has led to a postponement of the start of trading under the AfCFTA, we must continue to advocate for an early commencement of stronger intra-African trade. For therein lies an important part of attaining Africa’s development promise.

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