What Africa must do to mitigate the damaging effects of Coronavirus

COVID-19 has wreaked such damage to the world’s economy, and this is now very evident in the West. But we should not take solace in any false sense of security that nations like Nigeria are either immune to the vagaries of this plague or that we would not be as hard hit. The reason countries in the Western Hemisphere are reporting more significant numbers than developing nations is primarily due to the availability of testing and real-time information.

This crisis should force a commonality of purpose in Africa. And more so in Nigeria. This is beyond politics. Beyond religion. Beyond region. And beyond ethnicity. As crisis go, this one can be described as existential. Even when we are able to avoid a high human toll from this virus, we would not be able to escape a much higher economic toll. We may have a recession. The challenge right now must be to mitigate it, since we cannot avoid it. Already, we see forced currency devaluations from the Cape to Cairo. These will no doubt lead to internal inflation, which will spell trouble for nations like Nigeria, that have a high external dollar debt burden.

Oil prices have crashed, and that by itself should not be enough to trigger a crisis. After all, the current price of oil was lower than it is today when President Obasanjo and I assumed office on May 29, 1999. Yet we paid off Nigeria’s entire foreign debt. As it stands today, the world is too preoccupied with its challenges to prioritise Africa, and so we have to prioritise ourselves. The issue of Nigeria wanting to borrow $6.9 billion at this time shows the almost delusory state of our government. No one has that type of money to throw about.

So, other than asking for debt relief, what can we realistically do to protect ourselves from the type of economic collapse that could lead to social upheaval in Nigeria?

Its quite unfortunate that we are in a world where we think that we are superior to another ....but everyone is gonna end in six feet...

atiku It will be ok

With the trajectory of the infection in other countries it is not uncommon for such Estimation to be made, plus the lackadaisical nature in conforming to social distancing in itself is a time bomb of cases waiting to explode.

atiku That is true

atiku .........and no saint. Once bitten twice shy.

atiku He is very correct. If we continue to play politics with C19, the worse is yet to come.

atiku Hmm, Our President don pack ?

atiku You've got no choice now

atiku It is the plain truth and it's unfortunate everything is about political correctness and ego massaging. May God help us!

atiku You can say dat again, but u re not exclusive

atiku I refuse to be scared Sir. I believe Everything will be OK soonest

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