Mark Kapchanga
16 November 2009
Nairobi — Africa has been urged to come up with long-term measures that will ensure it is shielded from the economic crisis that is threatening the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
The African Development Bank Group's chief economist, Louis Kasekende, said Africa will only redeem the growth it had registered over the past three years by coming up with strong strategies to mitigate the effects of the global financial crisis.
He was speaking to The EastAfrican at the just-concluded conference, themed "Fostering development in an era of financial and economic crisis" in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
"Africa's social and economic gains of the past decade are seriously threatened due to the global financial and economic crisis," Dr Kasekende said, adding that millions of Africans are falling back into extreme poverty. "For most African countries, the challenge is preventing further collapse in growth and gearing up for recovery."
The continent's recent impressive economic performance has benefited from high commodity prices and reforms that addressed some of the internal structural constraints, he said, adding that sustaining these reforms will be a challenge.
Pressing on with the reform agenda however holds the greatest promise to sustaining growth and poverty reduction in the medium term, Dr Kasekende said.
To ensure robust strategies are formulated to guard the continent, Dr Kasekende said, AfDB and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa have been in the forefront in fighting the crisis.
"We have quickly moved in scaling up our resource flows and technical and capacity building activities to support African countries. Specifically, the Bank and Uneca have played an important role in mobilising dialogue in search of appropriate responses to the global financial crisis," said Dr Kasekende.
The economist also warned that Africa could soon be in a debt crisis as many countries on the continent are now engaging in over-borrowing due to the perception that it has a direct correlation with growth.
Augustin Kwasi Fosu, the deputy director of the Finland-based United Nations university, concurred.
The Addis meeting comes just seven months after a similar one was held in Tunis.
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