<\/p>\n
John Mahama<\/strong><\/p>\n The former president John Dramani Mahama has conceded that COVID 19 had devastating effects on economies of African countries.<\/p>\n He further admitted that the two-month-old Russia-Ukraine war has had negative impact on African countries.<\/p>\n Mr. Mahama painted the bleak picture of the global and geopolitical events on the continent Ghana while speaking at the 24th Africa Business Conference, organised by Harvard Business School in the United States.<\/p>\n He however, argues that, the handling of the crisis by various governments showed how bad impact of the two storms reflected on the economy, believing that managers of the economies on the continent like Ghana\u2019s economy could have been more resilient.<\/p>\n According to Mr. Mahama, \u201cdata from the Economic Commission of Africa\u201d, shows that the COVID-19 pandemic created the \u201ccontinent\u2019s worst recession in 50 years, with real GDP shrinking by an average of 3% in 2020\u201d, and that even \u201cbefore the pandemic, poverty reduction was already a major challenge in Africa.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pandemic is estimated to have dragged about 55 million more people into poverty in Africa and exposed another 46 million more to the risk of hunger and malnourishment. Indeed 70% of hunger in Africa, which had already been on the rise since 2014, is directly attributed to this pandemic.<\/p>\n The former president emphasised that \u201cLike governments all over the world, it became necessary for African governments to take action to shield their population from the effects of the pandemic. This meant, in many cases, an increase in deficits due to unbudgeted expenditures.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has devasted many African economies and sunk them deeper into unsustainable debts and economic downturns. This pandemic has had a general deleterious effect on the economy of African nations,\u201d Mahama said.<\/p>\n On the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the African continent, Mahama posited \u201cEven as COVID-19 still lingers and African countries attempt to reset their economies, yet another disruption, this time of a geopolitical nature, threatens to wreck more havoc on an already fragile continent.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Russia-Ukraine conflict is set to peg Africa\u2019s growth back by an estimation of about 0.7%. Inflation is expected to rise by at least 2.2% in 2022 and as many as 43 countries that depend on energy and food imports will be confronted with fiscal and current account problems.<\/p>\n \u201cGlobal increase in energy prices has escalated the cost of living and compounded hardships in many countries.<\/p>\n \u201cIn light of the above, the conversation is now about overcoming the twin problems of a pandemic and its aftermaths, and a geopolitical-induced economic crisis, as opposed to one that focuses on just post-pandemic recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n Touching on Ghana\u2019s case, the 2020 flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress was of the view that some African countries have been able to deal with the effects of the pandemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war better than others, based on the resilience of their economies, discipline and prudent use of their resource envelopes in the period of this crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my country, Ghana, our economy has emerged in an extremely poor shape from the COVID experience. A ballooning deficit, double-digit inflation, a nosediving currency, increasing debt distress, are some of the symptoms of a very ill economy,\u201d Mahama said.<\/p>\n \u201cGhana\u2019s case was easy to predict. With the cavalier handling of the economy by the current administration, unbridled borrowing from the capital markets, created misstatements and other critical fiscal Budget figures were certain to come to a head eventually,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He stressed that \u201cGhana went into the pandemic without adequate buffers and has emerged with a terribly battered economy.<\/p>\n \u201cTo make matters worse, a pandemic windfall in excess of GHC33 billion, which could have cushioned the economy, remains unaudited and is believed to have been used largely in the quest to win Election 2020 at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n HBS Africa Business Conference was created by African students at the Harvard Business School (HBS) some twenty-four years ago to highlight and uplift what it means to be African, to do business in Africa and to push for African development and prosperity.<\/p>\n This gave birth to the Africa Business Club (ABC) and informed its mission and purpose.<\/p>\n By Vincent Kubi<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Mahama The former president John Dramani Mahama has conceded that COVID 19 had devastating effects on economies of African countries. He further admitted that the two-month-old Russia-Ukraine war has had negative impact on African countries. Mr. Mahama painted the bleak picture of the global and geopolitical events on the continent Ghana while speaking at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1067589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[1321,671,261,2913,4847,1125,6478,4071],"class_list":["post-1067586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-admits","tag-africa","tag-covid19","tag-destroyed","tag-economies","tag-mahama","tag-russiaukraine","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1067586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1067586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1067586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1067586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}