From Uche Usim, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has called for stronger collaboration among members of the International Development Association (IDA) to tackle a plethora of challenges plaguing African nations.
The President stated this recently in his remarks delivered on his behalf by Mrs. Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, at the meeting of African Heads of States’ Summit on IDA in Abidjan.
According to him, some of the critical challenges that require solidarity from IDA friends were social and economic in nature.
He said: “We are that the pandemic left behind some unpleasant scars on all economies irrespective of their income status including the donor community.
“For us in Africa, apart from the threats of the third wave of the pandemic and the lack of access to affordable vaccines in a timely manner, there is a severe food crisis ravaging most of our countries and this has great implications on our human capital index. This is in addition to the ravaging impacts of climate change as evidenced in the Sahel, Lake Chad and Horn of Africa”, he said.
He added that the region also faces massive infrastructural needs ranging from roads, rails and telecommunication networks that will support efforts at joining the digital revolution in order to galvanize jobs creation.
“The net effect of all these challenges has continued to manifest itself in fragility, forced displacement, increased poverty and hunger, which results in the raving migration.
“Given the current lack of fiscal space and increasing debt vulnerabilities, addressing all these requires a combination of political will, a fully reformed policy arena and a pool of concessionary resources.
“We must continue to build partnerships and global solidarity especially with the most vulnerable population, most of whom are domiciled in Africa. The World Bank Group (WBG) and indeed the international community cannot afford to claim success in their mandates with Africa still left behind in almost every sphere of life.
He thus called for more concessional resources spanning a 20-item policy menu needed to galvanise the growth required to assist the continent in its long-term development aspirations.
Since the IDA met in Paris under President Macron’s initiative, President Buhari noted that “we had all resolved to be emphatically resolute in underscoring the imminent threats to Africa’s decade-long developmental gains and solicit the support of the international community to strengthen the outcomes.”
Given the magnitude of the challenges, he said that they were hopeful that together, a very robust replenishment awaits them in Tokyo, adding that: “Given the enormity of the challenges, if we are not strongly purposeful on the African agenda, Sub-Saharan Africa will not be able to fully attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
On the essence of the meeting, President Buhari said: “Although, we have been consulting both bilaterally and under the umbrella of the ECOWAS and the AU, our meeting is to continue this discussion by engaging with our trusted partner – the World Bank Group especially IDA which has remained in solidarity with us for all this while.
According to him, Africa’s resource needs are consistent with that of the SDGs as encapsulated in the 2015 Addis Ababa declaration of Financing for development document ‘From Billions – to – Trillions’. “We agree that these needs cannot be met with Official Development Assistance (ODA) alone, we are, therefore, stepping up our domestic resources mobilisation efforts, but the pandemic has created a new sense of urgency and gravity.
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