The Interview Editors
Oby Ezekwesili, a one-time vice president at the World Bank and former Education Minister in Nigeria has asked China to take responsibility for its failures in managing the coronavirus outbreak in a transparent manner.
Ezekwesili also asked China to pay Africa $140bn in compensation for the impact the pandemic has already had on decades of economic gains and growth opportunities.
In an article published in the Washington Post on April 16, 2020, Ezekwesili said Africa and its most vulnerable population has always been on the receiving end of the failures of the rich and powerful nations, paying the steepest price for these failures whether it is the impact of climate change, terrorism or food security.
“It is time to make offending rich countries pay the poor ones a global risk burden tax for delaying their rise out of poverty,” she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic, Ezekwesili wrote, “has dealt a severe injury to Africa’s development prospects and worsened the conditions of its poor and vulnerable. Although there are calls for voluntary international aid to support the continent during this difficult time, this is far from the best solution.”
The continent, she said, must be accorded damages and liability compensation from China, the rich and powerful country that failed to transparently and effectively manage this global catastrophe.
According to her, Africa’s economic gains since the last global crisis have been eroded by the effects of the ongoing pandemic.
She said, “China should immediately announce a complete write-off of the more than $140 billion that its government, banks and contractors extended to countries in Africa between 2000 and 2017. This would provide partial compensation to African countries for the impact that the coronavirus is already having on their economies and people.
“The current conditions mirror what happened during the 2008 global financial crisis. In my time as the vice president in charge of the World Bank’s operations in Africa, we had to mobilize internal and partner resources to mitigate the severity of the economic recession suffered by the continent. Exogenous shocks dealt a lethal blow to the countries’ decade-long steady rises of economic growth, which had averaged 5 to 6 percent annually until tumbling to 2.4 percent in 2009.”
This sharp fall, she said, “ended Africa’s upward economic growth trajectory and sent per capita income tumbling.
Ezekwesili insisted that China should demonstrate world leadership by acknowledging its failure to be transparent on COVID-19 and that Beijing’s leadership should then commit to an independent expert panel evaluation of its pandemic response. China and the rest of the Group of 20 countries should engage with the Africa Union and countries to design a reparations mechanism.
