By Zayamu Hassan
The Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Vera Songwe, said African countries expect the G7 leaders to evolve what she described as the COVID-19 vaccine road map.
Represented by Nita Deerpalsing, the ECA’s Director of Communications, Ms Songwe stated this in UK during a media briefing organised by ONE Campaign.
Leaders of the Group of Seven nations (G7) including the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, have begun a three-day summit in the UK which will last till June 13.
Their discussions will focus mainly on issues relating to COVID-19 recovery, climate change and trade.
Ms Songwe reiterated the need for a “historic vaccines roadmap where the G7 stop hoarding, start sharing the financing, the doses and the manufacturing capacity needed to deliver on vaccine access.”
This, she added, would mean “one billion doses donated soonest, with two billion donated by the end of the year; the ACT Accelerator and the African vaccines facility fully funded, and the tech shared so we can manufacture vaccines, therapies, and diagnostics locally.”
She also called for an urgent need for a historic green recovery financing and coordination agreement, leveraging the IMF Special Drawing Rights and World Bank balance sheets, meeting the $100 billion climate finance pledge, and doubling individual climate finance pledges by G7 countries.
This, according to her, will ensure that African countries have access to liquidity and concessional finance to invest in a sustainable green jobs boom for the youth of the continent and to counter the surge of extreme poverty due to the pandemic and its aftershocks.
UN official further called for an interrogation on the G7 aid cuts, which she said, disproportionately hit and hurt African nations (cut by two-thirds), disproportionately hit women (cut by 80-90%), and disproportionately hit the UN system agencies like UNAIDS, UNFPA UN Women.
“As an African, a woman, and working for the UN, imagine how this makes us feel about the UK as fair play partners as we face these crises together,” she stressed.
She also called on the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson to “listen to the conscience within his own Conservative Party, and across the generous hearted British nation, and keep the pledge he made to Africa.
“This would go on record; down in history as having shown enlightened leadership on Covid and on climate when the world most needed it.”
