IndustriAll Global has commended the Africa Development Bank’s approval of a $10 billion facility to support African countries in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. This is even as it said the re-election of Nigeria’s Akinwunmi Adeshina as president was a victory for Africa.
Addressing a virtual meeting of Africa regional executive council of IndustriALL Global Union, anchored in Johannesburg, South Africa, recently, Issa Aremu, vice president of the African region, said, in coming years, the bank must deepen partnerships with organised labour, civil society as well as businesses.
“With the disruptions of global supply chain, AfDB must rise to promote agricultural and industrial revolution in the continent. Global resources must be allocated for real economy rather than bailing out financial institutions.
“All financial institutions, including AfDB, must place employment and decent work at the centre of macro-economic policies alongside emergency debt relief to enable African countries to return to the path of development,” he said.
Aremu also stated that all AfDB projects must ensure secured, decent, full employment to get African youths back to work away from insurgency and ill-informed migration. He noted that as African countries gradually ease the lockdown occasioned by COVID-19, African governments must guard against a return to negative socio-economic policy measures.
According to him, such measures have undermined the continent’s capacity to respond in terms of protection of lives and livelihoods.
He decried what he called a return to “business-as-usual” policies of deregulated fuel price and electricity tariff in Nigeria and alleged mismanagement of R5 billion ($299 million) award of tenders to supply the government with personal protective equipment (PPE) needed for the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. Aremu said Industriall Global supported the resistance of trade unions in Nigeria against fuel price hike and protest against “coronavirus corruption” in South Africa, adding that, recovery of African economy is only possible “through enhanced purchasing power of citizens through lower prices and transparency in corporate and national governance.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, he observed, impacted negatively on the mining sector in South Africa, where some mines shut down completely, with some workers leaving with little after toiling in the mines for many years, reduced working hours and retrenchment in the automobile, textile and garment, oil and gas sectors in Nigeria and Kenya.
He, therefore, suggested that what Africa needs under the “new normal” is a radical departure from “the past unhelpful neo-liberal economics of liberalization, deregulation and high prices, factory closures and export orientation into urgent diversification, import substitution, re-Industrialization and beneficiation.
“This is the time to re-inflate the African economy as commendably being done by the African central banks in the wake of COVID-19 and not a panicky contraction as wrongly being proposed by some fiscal authorities based on the advice of IMF and World Bank,” he said