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Kenyan children working at a quarry
near Nairobi. The human capital needed by the world had not got enough
attention, said the IMF’s Abebe Aemro Selassie. Photograph: Brian Inganga/AP
The
director of the World Monetary Fund for the continent has stated that if the
international community does not assist Africa in recovering from Covid and the
effects of the Ukraine war, it will be "playing with fire."
Abebe
Aemro Selassie, director of the IMF's Africa department, told the Guardian that
failing to support and invest in the continent would be shortsighted and
harmful to the world economy given that half of the new workers entering the
global labor force over the next ten years would be from sub-Saharan Africa.
The
youngsters whose education the pandemic has disrupted will make up one out of
every two people joining the global labor force in ten years, he predicted.
“The
human capital we need to motor the global economy is not getting the attention
it needs. It’s a massive collective failure,” he added.
“Almost
certainly – unless we think robots are going to take care of everything – there
is going to be a shortage of labour in most advanced economies, and even
elsewhere.
“Despite
all the innovations we have had, labour has shifted from one sector to another,
and 60-70% of the population has remained in work.
“People
will move to different professions, but people will still keep working.
Globally, we are going to need labour to complement capital, and that labour
input can, increasingly, only come from Africa.”
Selassie,
who has spent 28 years working for the IMF, also stated that the continent's
gains since the 1990s—which were brought about by internal reforms, a
flourishing global economy, and large aid and debt relief packages—had
"gone into reverse."
As
the economies of the continent were already weakening, he claimed that the
Russian invasion of Ukraine (which has disrupted global supply lines and driven
up commodity prices) and declining aid funding had made matters worse.
Selassie
told the 13th Andrew Crockett lecture governors’ roundtable for African central
bankers in Oxford last week that the IMF had given sub-Saharan countries $50bn
(£41bn) since March 2020 to support them during the pandemic, “but its
effectiveness would be greater still if it was complementing, rather than
partly offsetting, declining support from other development partners.”
Ethiopia,
Somalia, and South Sudan are three African nations that are experiencing severe
food insecurity as a result of poor rainfall, rising food costs, and a lack of
donor support.
The
UK government, the fourth-largest contributor, reduced its aid spending from
0.7 percent to 0.5 percent of its gross domestic product, which led to a 20
percent decrease in financing between 2020 and 2021, from £14.4 billion to
£11.5 billion. Spending on humanitarian help has also been cut in half by the
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, from £1.53 billion in 2020 to
£744 million in 2021.
Selassie
had "absolutely no doubt" about the future of the continent despite
the challenges it was facing, he said. It will progress in some way, he
continued.
"The
question is: Can we hasten this evolution without causing too many people
suffering?"
Source:
The Guardian
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