BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT THE government of Ghana and a South Africa company have proved that major business deals can be made even during the time of a worldwide health disaster brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Freight and Rail company Thelo DB has signed an agreement with Ghana to build a 217 km rail network - the Ghana Western Corridor Railway Line project - that will transport natural resources, especially bulk commodities such as bauxite, iron ore and agricultural produce such as cocoa.  Signatories to the deal hope that the multimillion dollar deal will encourage African private sector investment and finance provision…

ALEX VAN DEN HEEVER, Chair of Social Security Systems Administration and Management Studies, Adjunct Professor in the School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand The supplementary budget tabled last week by South Africa’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, whose primary objective was to make more money available for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, sheds no light on the relative prioritisation of prevention over treatment for COVID-19. The required health system response to COVID 19 broadly falls into these two areas: prevention and treatment. The two are closely interlinked. And there are severe shortcomings in both. On the prevention side, interventions…

OWN CORRESPONDENT AFRICA is the heart of motor vehicle manufacturing giant Nissan to grow in the midst of the greatest economic challenge since the 1929 Great Depression.The economies of most countries of Africa and the world have been devastated by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to job losses, closure of businesses and the general collapse of economies.Nissan Africa, Middle East and India (AMI) have unveiled a new four-year strategy to meet the economic challenge head-on and grow the company’s market share. At the heart of Nissan's new focus is that commitment to grow in and with…

TOLU OLAREWAJU, Lecturer in Economics, Staffordshire University THE COVID-19 pandemic will have economic consequences for many countries. In Nigeria, the country’s lockdowns froze economic activities, causing job losses and supply chain disruptions. And its dependence on oil for revenue and foreign exchange has made it particularly vulnerable to the unprecedented oil price crash triggered by a collapse in demand. Some forecasts suggest that Nigeria’s unemployment rate could rise to 33.6% (or 39.4 million people) by the end of the year if urgent steps are not taken. At the end of 2018, it stood at 23.1% (or 20.9m people). In addition,…

BAN KI-MOON and PATRICK VERKOOIJEN AFRICA is feeling the economic blow of COVID-19 before the impact of the disease itself. For while the continent of 1.2 billion people has registered fewer than 3% of the world’s coronavirus cases so far, the economic fallout has been severe. Lockdowns, the collapse in oil and commodity prices and the breakdown of many supply chains are punching huge holes through national budgets. This in turn has limited the ability of governments to meet people’s immediate health and survival needs. With a continent-wide recession looming and the UN predicting a “hunger pandemic” in the wake…