Matilda Moyo: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 19 December 2020:
Africa faces its worst economic recession in 25 years, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is estimated that the continent’s economy will contract by 2.6% at worst, pushing about 29 million people into extreme poverty and causing 19 million job losses, while remittances to sub-Saharan Africa are likely to decline by 23.1% ($37 billion) in 2020 alone.
Africa’s challenge is not the absence of liquidity or funds to finance development. Its problems are massive illicit financial flows that are draining funding capacity and the lack of ownership over natural resources, coupled with a whole narrative built around managing poverty instead of development, and depicting Africa as a poor continent in need of help from the international community.