Queen NwabuezeThe African Development Bank (AfDB) has predicted slow economic growth for Nigeria and the entire African continent in 2022 due to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The AfDB President, Akinwunmi Adesina, who disclosed this at the Bank’s Annual General Meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, said the economies of Nigeria and other African countries require at least $432 billion to effectively gain full recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelThe leading African multilateral development finance institution emphasized that the continent’s economic growth will be sluggish for the year 2022, in a message Adesina delivered at the AfDB annual general meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
According to the AfDB boss: “The recovery for Africa will be very costly. Africa will need at least $432 billion to address the effects of Covid19 on its economies + on the lives of its people, resources that it does not have.”
“The measures taken already by the global community, especially the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments, and the issuance of the $650 billion Special Drawing Rights by the @IMFNews, have all helped.”
On the outlook of Africa’s economy, he said while the Real GDP rebounded strongly in 2021, growing by 6.9 percent in comparison to this year’s outcome, he said the continent would record slow growth of 4.1 percent in 2022.
He listed the crippling effects of the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict as reasons for the slow economic growth.
He said: “The covid-19 pandemic has brought about sluggish growth in the economic output of some countries in the continent. This slow but negative growth was principally driven by the slump in the level of productive activities resulting from the effect of the pandemic.”
However, in the case of Nigeria, there had been a recession after two consecutive quarters of negative growth. But recent data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has shown sustained growth in the national output for six consecutive quarters to 3.1 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2022, from 3.98 percent in 2021, although, still a drag by the 26 percent year on year negative growth in the oil sector.
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