Africa should look to covid-19 and war as 'opportunities' - UN adviser

The United Nations Special Adviser for Africa, Cristina Duarte, has argued in the last 24 hours that the African continent should look to covid-19 and the war in Ukraine "as opportunities", arguing that it is necessary to break three paradoxes to recover from these crises.

Speaking to Lusa agency, on the sidelines of the 15th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV 2022), which takes place Tuesday and Friday in Guimarães, Braga district, Cristina Duarte considered that "these external shocks created ruptures that routines do not create".

"So, we Africans have only one alternative: to look at these ruptures as opportunities. To recover from these external crises - covid-19 and war in Ukraine - Africa must break three paradoxes," said António Guterres, special adviser for Africa to the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres.

The UN official believes that Africa needs to break what it calls financial, food and energy paradoxes.

"Africa is a continent rich in financial resources. However, it finds itself in a situation of not having fiscal space, of having seen its debt grow substantially in recent years. Africa asks with its right hand for debt suspension, debt relief, but with its left hand loses $88 billion in illicit flows. This is the first paradox that has to be broken," says Cristina Duarte.

For the former Finance Minister of Cape Verde (2006/2016), the second paradox concerns food security systems, because the African continent "is extremely rich in agricultural resources, which can feed and create extremely interesting value chains, but live in a chronic situation of food insecurity".

According to the special adviser, the third paradox is the energetic one, explaining that "Africa is abundant with energy resources, but it is a dark continent".

"And therefore, these three paradoxes have to be broken so that, in fact, the recovery of these external shocks is made to another level.

And this crisis has partly put this reality a little bare," says Cristina Duarte.

For this adviser, the UN Sustainable Development Programme 16, which aims to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels, "is crucial" to evolve and achieve objectives.

Cristina Duarte warns that "public policies in Africa cannot continue to marginalize the value and importance of institutions as intangible assets in the development process."

"This crisis is giving us the opportunity to recognize this. If, in fact, Africa, african countries, are able to recognise the important role that institutions play as intangible assets in development, this will allow those same African countries to gain space for political intervention. This will allow them, as a result, to gain higher levels of ownership of their flows and better management of their stocks," said the UN official. For Cristina Duarte, this is the way and what "Africa has to equate more strongly".

"Everything else is technical: inflation, monetary, economic, foreign exchange policy, has a menu of measures and immeasurable instruments. But if these issues are more out of the political economy are not properly addressed, and we go directly to the technicalities of economic policy, I think we have lost 'the global picture again'," warns the UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser for Africa.