Africa-Press – Tanzania. PRESIDENT Paul Kagame of Rwanda has called other African leaders to come together and discuss ways of moving forward due to the effects of Covid-19 that hit most economies in the continent.
President Kagame said this during the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Africa Day conversations in the third edition of its annual discussions this year, bringing together African leaders familiar with the continent heritage to discuss various social, economic and political issues impacting Africa.
“The effect of Covid-19 has both been felt by the government and private sector.
We should learn from this shock to invest more of our budget in our national health system. “This is not the last global crisis and the next one should not catch Africa unprepared” President Kagame said.
President Kagame said it was important for African leaders to come together and discuss the crisis and discuss about the causes of conflicts and poverty.
“It is not about who is doing this or that, I think mutual respects is the best form of relationship between Africa and rest of the world. We talk of problems in Africa, deprivation and poverty, but this is not our identity,” Mr Kagame said.
UBA Group Chairman and Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony Elumelu, said they have seen youth despite Covid- 19 leveraged their talents expertise network and technology to create wealth and support the communities they live.
“We must therefore make sure that the gains these youths have made are not erased,” Mr Elumelu said.
The World Health Organization Director Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that WHO is working day in day out to bring immediate solutions for the equitable distribution of vaccine doses.
However, it is clear that Africa cannot rely solely on the importation of vaccines from the rest of the world. “We must build capacity not only for Covid-19 vaccines but for other vaccines and medical products,” Dr Ghebreyesus said.
He added, more than anything else, the pandemic has demonstrated that health is not luxury item or simply an outcome of development but its human right and a prerequisite for social and economic development.
World Trade Organisation(WTO), Director General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said that if Africa wants to recover from coronavirus pandemic, the discussion of restricting debt was most important and giving the continent economies space of breathe so that they can invest only in the health sector but also on economic sector and we are going to recover.
“It is important for the world that we reverse this vaccine inequality and Africa benefits from it. “We cannot recover sustainability without it.
So we have to fight for it, whether by getting more vaccines in or by manufacturing our own,” the Director General said.
