PRESS STATEMENT: STRENGTHENING THE AFRICAN RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
African nations across board have been making significant efforts to mitigate the impacts of the global pandemic affecting almost every country in the world. These efforts are highly commendable and encouraging considering the significant challenges many of our countries face with resource mobilization. The debt relief and forgiveness so far obtained will be of tremendous benefit to the continent but much more is required and should be sought. It is not clear when the pandemic will end so the African strategy is key to ensure that post-pandemic Africa is repositioned for increased growth, prosperity and unity. The African Union and African CDC have made laudable efforts thus far but much more needs to be done. Below are a few recommendations to strengthen Africa’s response to the pandemic.
Develop a comprehensive economic recovery plan for Africa.
Create an interactive technology platform for increasing cooperation and communication amongst African States relating to the pandemic. This platform will allow representatives of African states upload reports, data, links and other important information that will be available for all countries real-time. Access to sensitive information will only be allowed by the approved government representatives from each country.
Strong consideration for sourcing health equipment and personal protective equipment as a continent. Priority for purchases should be made from as many African nations as possible and that have the capacity. A secured and restricted website could be developed to bring together all of Africa’s requirements. Each nation could state what they need and this could be updated daily or weekly. This will make the continental requirement known at any point in time. Countries can open accounts on the platform and fund the accounts periodically. When purchases are made they are done so for the entire continent at a time so they end up being cheaper for each country on a per unit basis. Because first consideration is given to continental businesses and industries, this ensures job and wealth creation as well as strengthening of the African economy. This could be broadened for the post-pandemic era as well.
Develop an African data portal that can allow African scientists, researchers and health experts, academics, governments and others to share Africa specific information relating to the pandemic (as well as general data useful outside the continent). This is very important to help political leaders and health authorities in the various African nations in the area of decision making especially during a pandemic.
Develop an African data portal that can allow African scientists, researchers and health experts, academics, governments and others to share Africa specific information relating to the pandemic (as well as general data useful outside the continent). This is very important to help political leaders and health authorities in the various African nations in the area of decision making especially during a pandemic.
To facilitate increased intra-African trade there is a need to significantly improve the African infrastructure network. African leaders need to urgently act beyond building roads and railways from one city to another in their countries to building transnational transport infrastructure. Air transportation can be leveraged for cargo shipments as much as possible while driving infrastructure development. With increasing oil production and refining capacity on the continent coming on stream (as well as lower global oil prices) air transportation for cargo may become increasingly viable.
Develop a Pan-African Digital Market Place
The Problem: Insufficient intra-African trade and high-unemployment of Africa’s young people. According to Afreximbank’s Africa Trade Report 2019, Intra-African trade grew by 17% in 2018 ($159 Billion) however Africa’s contribution to global trade in 2018 was 2.6% up from 2.4% in 2017. Intra-African trade represented about 16% of Africa’s total merchandise trade of $997.9 billion in 2018. According to the World Economic Forum (Chart of the day: The EU’s trading partners article published on its website on 29th April 2019), Europe’s 2018 total merchandise trade for 28 countries stood at $6.089 Trillion (5.474 Trillion Euro) while Intra-Europe trade was $3.914 Trillion (3.518 Trillion Euro) or 64% of total merchandise trade (this is four times Africa’s figure for 2018). Africa needs to not only increase its contribution to world trade but more significantly and most importantly the volume and value of intra-African trade.
Main Objective: To increase the standard of living of Africans (mostly young people) significantly by providing opportunities for work and business across Africa through an interactive, ubiquitous internet platform. By 2030 the following should be achieved:
Increase African unity (especially young people; religious, cultural & social tolerance; more intra-African marriages, more diverse African businesses).
Contribute significantly to increasing intra-African trade by at least 100%.
Create employment opportunities for at least 100 million (directly and indirectly) young Africans.
Engender the sustainability and development of at least 20 million MSMEs across Africa.
Generate tax revenues for African governments reaching at least a total of $20 Billion annually (includes earnings from businesses on the platform).
Attain annual revenues in excess of $100 billion.
Market: This African Digital Market Place will cut across all sectors (fishing and agriculture, manufacturing, cars, food, textiles as well as services retail, tourism, banking, entertainment etc). African entrepreneurs from across the Continent can sell products and services to customers with all transactions done electronically with uniquely developed payment platforms robust enough to manage the transaction volumes and the peculiarity of the platform. Clearly anyone or any business from any part of the world can make purchases on the platform but only businesses based and registered in Africa can sell.
Unique Value Proposition: This will become the largest and most robust pan-African digital trading platform for African entrepreneurs and consumers to buy and sell. This is not a basic e-commerce platform for selling products and services to consumers only. It is however a Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) platform which provides a digital market place for African Entrepreneurs to sell their products and services to consumers all over the world as well as to each other.
Unique Advantage: With the recent establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), impressive mobile subscriptions and increasing internet penetration (39.3% - Internet World Stats) across the continent (2019 - N. Africa 50%, West Africa 41%, Middle Africa 12%, Southern Africa 51%, Eastern Africa 32% - Datareportal); predominantly young and increasingly tech savvy population (75% of Africans below 35 years by 2030 – Population Reference Bureau); significant increase in mobile money transaction value by 34.9% to $130 billion in 2019 (GSM Association); well organised and effective African Union and other blocks across Africa (ECOWAS, SADC etc) amongst other factors ensure that the foundation for success are in place.
Increased specialization: Businesses listed on the platform and also including those which may not be but which will benefit tremendously because they are part of the entire supply chain will have to increase their specialization and quality to remain competitive. With significantly reduced labour costs in Africa and sustained continent wide investment in infrastructure, the continent would become a major production hub of the whole wide world.
Risks: There are significant risks ranging from current infrastructure limitations, inadequate power supply across most the continent, relatively high level of illiteracy (also diverse national languages), high rate of poverty which affects smart phone penetration and political will of leaders on the continent.
Mitigating the risks:
Increased creativity from logistics companies especially for last-mile distribution (e.g. using drones), enable local commercial transport businesses across Africa to leverage technology and urge African governments to work aggressively to close the infrastructure and power supply gap urgently.
A key segment on the digital marketplace will be renewable energy products to help drive continent wide migration to renewable energy.
Develop simple and user friendly interfaces effectively as well as alternative language platforms (for local languages) to broaden the user base.
African governments need to ensure that at least 70% of smart phones sold in Africa are produced in Africa. Local Smartphone manufacturers should be given tax breaks for a few years and access to low-cost (or zero-cost) capital to help drive down Smartphone costs across Africa.
Learn from globally successful E-commerce companies.
African leaders and governments will be shown the benefits of supporting the Pan-African Digital Marketplace and encouraged via the African Union and other blocks of countries to take necessary actions that will facilitate the participation of their countries in this platform.
Africa shall prevail! God bless Africa!
Signed
Abiodun Ajijola
National Coordinator
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