Afronomics

The COVID19 pandemic is taking hold in Africa, and countries are dealing with the health and economic impacts that are becoming clearer as the weeks go by. For many export-led economies, there has been a sharp decline in exports and consequently export revenues. The economic effects of the pandemic are projected to be huge. The private sector, especially small businesses, in Africa will be hard hit by this pandemic. Host Albert Zeufack, Chief Economist for the Africa Region at the World Bank, invites Dr. Arkebe Oqubay, the Senior Minister and Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, to help us understand the impact of this pandemic on the private sector in Africa, and share what Ethiopia is doing to protect people, support businesses, and save jobs.

Timely and relevant knowledge and information sharing can help individuals change behavior, can inform countries’ responses, and can help prevent missteps from being repeated across the world. For African countries that has meant taking what we know from East Asian and European countries that faced COVID-19 a bit earlier and helping figure out what may, or may not, work in places where informality is high, or where lockdowns are not feasible. Host Albert Zeufack, Chief Economist for the Africa Region at the World Bank, is honored to welcome Mari Pangestu to Afronomics. Mari Pangestu is the Managing Director for Development Policy and Partnerships at the World Bank and oversees the World Bank’s knowledge work.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having severe public health, economic and social impacts around the world, and Dr. John Nkengasong, Director of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called this public health emergency a “looming disaster” for the African continent. The Africa CDC has been at the forefront of limiting the health impact of the pandemic, coordinating efforts of member states, sourcing medical equipment globally and locally for countries on the continent, and providing guidelines on how countries can implement social distancing measures among other efforts. Delivering this mandate within the varying contexts of African countries is not without its challenges. Host Albert Zeufack, Chief Economist for the Africa Region at the World Bank, invites Dr. Nkengasong to tell us about the measures they are taking to fight the pandemic under these circumstances.

The COVID-19 pandemic is only just beginning to take hold in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is already having a huge impact. The World Bank’s recent Africa’s Pulse report found that COVID-19 is likely to drive Sub-Saharan Africa into its first recession in 25 years, with growth potentially falling as low as negative 5.1% in 2020. The crisis is likely to push millions of households into poverty. Food security is at risk because of trade disruptions, lower agricultural production and fewer food imports. And with 90 percent of people working in informal jobs, it is harder to reach workers with the support they need. African countries need resources today to help contain and combat this pandemic, and to safeguard lives and livelihoods. The big question is: what can be done? Host Albert Zeufack, Chief Economist for the Africa Region at the World Bank, invites Acha Leke, the Chairman of McKinsey’s Africa Region, to discuss what individuals, governments, and companies can do to help African countries and African people pull through.

Ten years ago, the world was fighting its way out of a global financial crisis, but prospects were strong for Sub-Saharan Africa to quickly recover. The World Bank started publishing Africa’s Pulse at that time, as a vehicle to help us track these trends and put the economic and development outlook squarely on the agenda for our discussions with African leaders and our partners.

Over the last decade, we have been riding the wave of the “Africa Rising” narrative through the economic ups and downs in the region, including a regional crisis that stopped progress in its tracks in the middle of the decade, from which many countries are still recovering. 

We published the 20th edition of Africa’s Pulse in October, and as we close the decade, host Albert Zeufack, Chief Economist for the Africa Region at the World Bank, invites colleagues Shanta Devarajan, Punam Chuhan-Pole, and Cesar Calderon, who have led this important work over the last ten years. 

Despite the incredible progress that so many African countries have made, poverty remains a defining part of the narrative around Africa. While the share of people living in extreme poverty has come down in the last decades, the number of people has gone up, due to rapid population growth during the same period, to reach nearly 416 million people. If left unchecked, extreme poverty in the world will become almost exclusively an African issue by 2030, in just ten years. In this episode of Afronomics, Albert Zeufack welcomes Kathleen Beegle and Luc Christiaensen, the main authors of a new World Bank study on Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa, to discuss what needs to be done differently to fight poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

For more information, access the full study here: openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/32354

The 2019 World Development Report focused on the Future of Work on a global scale, highlighting the real tension between job losses in “old” manufacturing sectors that are susceptible to automation, and potential job gains driven by innovation in “new” sectors. Our Africa-focused companion report, released in July 2019, finds that Africa has a chance to take a different path – if governments and businesses can take advantage of digital technologies, and if the right policies and investments are in place.

Part two of this two-part podcast examines the role of social protection in helping workers, especially the most vulnerable, transition into the jobs and technologies of the future. Host Albert Zeufack welcomes Zainab Usman, Social Scientist in the Office of the Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank, and co-author of the World Bank’s recent Future of Work in Africa report.

The 2019 World Development Report focused on the Future of Work on a global scale, highlighting the real tension between job losses in “old” manufacturing sectors that are susceptible to automation, and potential job gains driven by innovation in “new” sectors. Our Africa-focused companion report, released in July 2019, finds that Africa has a chance to take a different path – if governments and businesses can take advantage of digital technologies, and if the right policies and investments are in place.

Part one of this two-part podcast looks at what’s different about the future of work in Africa compared to the rest of the world, and digs in to the potential of digital technologies to improve livelihoods and create jobs for all kinds of workers. Host Albert Zeufack welcomes Mark Dutz, Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank, and co-author of the World Bank’s recent Future of Work in Africa report.

Discussions on Sub-Saharan Africa often center on extreme poverty: the subcontinent is home to half of the world’s extreme poor, and the number of people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa keeps going up even though the rates of extreme poverty have declined. At the same time, on a continent as economically diverse as Sub-Saharan Africa, the issue of inequality cannot be ignored. Eight of the ten most unequal countries in the world, when looking at the Gini coefficient, are in Sub-Saharan Africa, and gaps persist when digging deeper into wage inequality, inequality of opportunity, and other areas where the playing field is far from level. There are no easy answers to reducing inequality, but several countries have taken positive steps to make their societies and economies more equitable.

In this episode of Afronomics, Albert welcomes Haroon Bhorat, Professor of Economics and Director of the Development Policy Research Unit at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Global Economy and Development Program and the Africa Growth Initiative. His research focuses on labor economics, poverty, and income distribution, and this episode of Afronomics takes a closer look at his recent work on wage inequality in South Africa as part of the broader discussion on inequality in Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the share of adults with a mobile money account now exceeds 10 percent. That mobile revolution began in Kenya. In this episode of Afronomics, World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, Albert Zeufack, speaks with Professor Njuguna Ndung’u who is currently the Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium and was the Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya from 2007 to 2015.

During Prof. Ndung’u’s tenure as Central Bank governor, Kenya stepped up as a global leader in financial inclusion. This was driven by the path-breaking M-Pesa program, which made mobile payments and mobile banking the norm for Kenyans everywhere.