Failure to invest in and support the continent was short-sighted and damaging to the global economy, as half of the new entrants to the global workforce over the next decade would come from sub-Saharan Africa, said Abebe Aemro Selassie, director of the IMF’s Africa division. the guardian. “In 10 years, one in two people entering the global workforce will come from sub-Saharan Africa – the very children whose education has been disrupted by the pandemic,” he said. “The human capital we need to drive the global economy is not getting the attention it needs. It is a huge collective failure,” he added. “Almost certainly – unless we believe that robots will take care of everything – there will be labor shortages in most advanced economies, even elsewhere. “Despite all the innovations we have had, work has shifted from one sector to another and 60-70% of the population has remained in work. “The influx of labor, increasingly, can only come from Africa,” says IMF Africa chief Abebe Aemro Selassie. Photo: Allison Shelley/IMF/EPA “People will move into different occupations, but people will continue to work. Globally, we will need labor to complement capital and that labor inflow can, increasingly, only come from Africa.” Selassie, who worked at the IMF for 28 years, added that successes across the continent since the 1990s – the result of domestic reforms, a booming global economy and generous aid and debt relief packages – had been “reversed”. . Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which disrupted global supply chains and sent commodity prices soaring) and falling aid budgets had worsened the continent’s already slowing economies, he said. Selassie told the governors’ roundtable of the 13th Andrew Crockett Lecture on African Central Bankers in Oxford last week that the IMF had given sub-Saharan countries $50bn (£41bn) since March 2020 to support them during during the pandemic, “but its effectiveness would be even greater if it complemented, rather than partially offset, reduced support from other development partners.” Three African countries – Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan – are facing acute food insecurity due to failed rains, rising food prices and a lack of donor support. The UK government, the fourth largest donor, has cut aid spending from 0.7% of its gross national income to 0.5%, resulting in a 20% cut in funding between 2020 and 2021 – from £14.4bn to £11.5bn. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has also halved humanitarian aid spending from £1.53bn in 2020 to £744m in 2021. Despite the difficulties facing Africa, Selassie had “absolutely no doubt” about the region’s future, he said. “One way or another, it will grow,” he added. “The question is: can we accelerate this development and prevent too many people from suffering in the process?”
