Africa: Economies Urged to Explore New Ways to Recover From Multiple Shocks

5 December 2022

Nairobi — African economies have been urged to include food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation framework in the economic agenda.

This was said during the African Economies Research Conference (AERC) 57th Biannual Research Workshop.

"We can accelerate African economic recovery journey through collaboration and cooperation towards research that focuses on how to protect private investors, how to reinforce education, recover the health infrastructure, food security, and food markets, and how to develop, and protect markets to help our economies to recover from the current shocks," National Treasury and Economics Planning Njuguna Ndung'u said.

Ndung'u also encouraged African economies to develop, regulate and even protect the markets as part of economic recovery.

He further challenged economic researchers to focus on domestic resource mobilisation and digital resolution in the African set-up.

In the last two decades, African economies have weathered multiple negative global shocks and remained resilient even when these shocks hit hard the core of key macroeconomic indicators. However, the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with the war in Ukraine and climate-related shocks have caused permanent damage that could take years to mend.

"We saw the covid-19 pandemic that hit the entire world, but Africa was affected differently from the rest of the world, and today the most relevant issue is the war in Ukraine that is affecting the whole world but quite different on how Africa is being tested and we need to figure out solutions in our own way on how to tackle these many shocks," AERC Board Ernest Aryeetey said.

On his part, Acting AERC Executive Director and Director of Training Théophile T. Azomahou noted that the economic fundamentals of most African economies have not changed much in the last three decades.

The conference brought together high-level policymakers, researchers, media, economists, academics, and non-state actors in a lively mix of speeches, presentations, plenary and concurrent sessions.

The Biannual Plenary will be followed by the 58th conference next year where fully developed papers arising from the interactions with policy and decision makers will be presented to a wider community of researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.

The papers will be published as Working Paper Series of AERC as well as special issue of the Journal of African Economies in July 2023.

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