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African Development Bank 2023 Annual Meetings

admin — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 17:00:01 +0000

African Development Bank 2023 Annual Meetings

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admin Tue, 06/13/2023 - 17:00

Thursday, May 25, 2023

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African Development Bank 2023 Annual Meetings

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Adesina calls out developed nations for not honoring $100 billion-a-year pledge

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A lack of adequate financing for tackling climate change in Africa has become dire and is “choking” the continent, African Development Bank Group President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina said on Monday.

He was addressing scores of journalists from Africa and around the world at a media lunch organized to kick off its 2023 Annual Meetings in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El Sheikh.

Adesina called out developed nations for not honoring the $100 billion-a-year climate finance pledge they made to developing countries.

“Africa is being short-changed in climate finance. Africa is choking,” he told the journalists.

“Your role as the media is very important to help carry the news – the news of efforts being made, challenges being faced, and the fierce urgency of now in getting much-needed climate finance to Africa,” the Bank chief said.

The Bank Group’s Annual Meetings will allow the Bank’s Board of Governors, African leaders and development partners to explore practical ways of “mobilizing private sector financing for climate and green growth in Africa,” in line with the theme of this year’s meetings.

Adesina said the theme was chosen to draw attention to the urgent need for climate finance. “Anywhere you look in Africa today, climate change is causing havoc,” Adesina said.

“In the Sahel, hotter temperatures are drying up limited water, causing water stress for crops and livestock and worsening food insecurity.”

The Bank chief said that in vast areas of East and Southern Africa, and in the Horn of Africa, a combination of droughts and floods is causing massive losses of people and infrastructure, leading to rising numbers of refugees.

“There is still much to do, as Africa’s private sector climate financing will need to increase by 36% annually,” he said.

The African Development Bank is spearheading climate adaptation efforts across the continent and has devoted 63% of its climate finance, the highest among all multilateral development banks.

The Bank’s new Climate Action Window will support millions of farmers, enabling them to access climate-resistant seeds. The institution has also launched the Desert to Power initiative to develop 10,000 megawatts of solar power to benefit nearly 250 million people across the Sahel.

The Bank and the Global Center for Adaptation have launched the African Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) to mobilize $25 billion to support Africa's adaptation to climate change. It has also established Alliance for Green Infrastructure (AGIA) in partnership with other institutions, to mobilize $10 billion in private investment for green infrastructure in Africa.

Adesina and the Bank Group’s operational vice presidents answered questions on the potential for using capital market instruments such as green bonds to back climate-related investments.

According to Bank estimates, Africa will need $2.7 trillion by 2030 to finance its climate change needs. Adesina said, “If Africa had that money, the Sahel would have electricity. If Africa had that money, we would recharge the Chad basin, which has provided livelihoods for millions of people in Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon. Everything will change in all those countries; we will green the Sahel. We will insure every single African country against catastrophic weather events.”

Adesina told the journalists, “Africa’s measured natural capital alone is estimated to be worth $6.2 trillion,” which, if well harnessed, can spur a more rapid economic growth and wealth generation.

He spoke about the Bank’s flagship Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) scheme that provides heat-tolerant seed varieties to increase yield in crops such as wheat. He gave the example of Ethiopia which is now self-sufficient in wheat production and plans to export the surplus to neighbouring countries.

Dr Adesina was accompanied by Vice Presidents Professor Kevin Urama, Dr Kevin Kariuki, Dr Beth Dunford, Solomon Quaynor, Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade and Simon Mizrahi.

The Bank will on Wednesday launch its annual African Economic Outlook report, a flagship publication on the state of African economies.

SOURCE:AfDB

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SCORECARD: How Nigeria’s oil sector fared under Buhari as petroleum minister

admin — Sun, 04 Jun 2023 04:00:01 +0000

SCORECARD: How Nigeria’s oil sector fared under Buhari as petroleum minister

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admin Sun, 06/04/2023 - 04:00

Saturday, May 27, 2023

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SCORECARD: How Nigeria’s oil sector fared under Buhari as petroleum minister

As the Muhammadu Buhari eight-year reign ends on 29 May, Nigerians continue to reflect on the various challenges faced in the petroleum sector and how it affected their livelihood.

During the electioneering period in 2015, Mr Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), criticised the incumbent government of Goodluck Jonathan for failing to solve the country’s unending petroleum sector crises.

At the time, Mr Buhari made a series of promises to Nigerians, which include fixing the nation’s moribund refineries, passing the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) within one year, ending fuel importation, addressing the corruption in the subsidy regime, among others.

To achieve these objectives, six months after he was elected president in 2015, Mr Buhari appointed himself as Minister of Petroleum Resources, a move that many Nigerians said would engender transparency and accountability in the nation’s opaque oil sector.

Addressing some select reporters in New York at the time, Mr Buhari said, “I will remain Minister of Petroleum. I will appoint a minister of State for Petroleum”.

According to him, the step was taken as part of efforts to sanitise the country’s oil sector, which is said to be bedevilled by corruption, massive fraud and crude oil theft.

Although the PIB was passed under his administration, the sector faced different challenges, including fuel scarcity disruptions that caused suffering for many Nigerians while fuel subsidies continue to gulp huge resources.

Failed Promises

Fuel Subsidy Removal

Mr Buhari, before his victory in 2015, had consistently opposed the fuel subsidy regime under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He also called for a reduction in the prices of petroleum products amidst efforts by the Goodluck Jonathan government to deregulate prices and end subsidy payments. He said there was no such thing as “subsidy” and dismissed it as a scam used by government officials to steal public funds.

Earlier in January 2012, Mr Jonathan’s administration had announced the removal of subsidies from petroleum products, thereby, adjusting the benchmark price of petrol from N65 to N141 per litre. The move triggered mass protests, known as #OccupyNigeria, as hundreds of thousands of Nigerians took to the streets.

Following the protest that lasted some days, the Jonathan administration was forced to reverse the fuel pump price to N97. Just before leaving office in 2015, it was further reduced to N87 per litre.

In his campaign promises, Mr Buhari assured Nigerians there would no longer be payments of subsidy.

In December 2015, Mr Buhari’s government began its move against subsidy by scrapping the Petroleum Support Fund and declaring an end to the era of subsidy payment. The president and the Minister of State for Petroleum at the time, Ibe Kachikwu, assured Nigerians that even with the removal of the subsidy, the price of petrol would remain as low as N85 per litre.

Mr Kachikwu said the government could no longer pay the subsidy due to the fraud tainting the scheme, adding that the government would channel its resources instead into getting the refineries up, and saving the trillions of naira past governments squandered on fuel subsidy payments.

However, Mr Buhari took the nation by surprise a year later when his administration suddenly increased the price of petrol to N145 per litre in 2016, with subsidy payment still in place. The government persuaded Nigerians to accept the increase.

When fuel queues resurfaced during the Christmas and New Year celebration of 2018, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said the landing cost of petrol was for months about N171.40 per litre, which is N26.40 above the official pump price of N145.

READ ALSO: Nigerian govt mulls national summit on removal of petroleum subsidy

At the time, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the fuel marketers traded blame on who was responsible for the scarcity, and it resulted in rising retail prices that averaged about N200 per litre in most states, except Abuja and Lagos where filling stations in the metropolis sold for N145.

In December 2018, it became evident that the government was quietly continuing with the subsidy regime and earmarked N305 billion for petrol subsidy in the 2019 budget proposal. But the administration did not admit it was paying for subsidy and introduced a new tagline for subsidy, calling it “under-recovery”.

“We have allowed N305 billion equivalent to one billion US dollars for under-recovery by the NNPC on Premium Motor Spirit in 2019,” Mr Buhari stated in his budget presentation speech to a joint session of the National Assembly.

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Niyi Osundare’s latest poetry collection features in reading, signing session by CORA-Roving Heights

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 14:50:01 +0000

Niyi Osundare’s latest poetry collection features in reading, signing session by CORA-Roving Heights

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admin Wed, 02/23/2022 - 14:50

Sunday, February 13, 2022

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Arts & Entertainment – Premium Times Nigeria

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Niyi Osundare’s latest poetry collection features in reading, signing session b…

The new collection of poetry by Nigeria’s preeminent poet laureate, Niyi Osundare, ‘GREEN: Sighs of Our Ailing Planet,’ will feature in a Reading/Signing session on February 20, 2022.

Jointly organised by the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) and Roving Heights Bookstores, the session titled, An Evening with Professor Niyi Osundare, will have the poet laureate reading sections from the collection before a live audience that would converge at the Roving Heights’ outlet at Plot 2&3, Water Corpo-ration Drive, Landmark Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos. The time is 4 p.m.

There will also be a virtual broadcast of the event, according to the organisers.
Released in January, the anthology, published by Commonwealth Books in conjunction with Black Widow Press is a compilation of poems reflecting on the environment and the current spate of odds and challenges facing its survival, especially with the perennial disrespect visited on it by humans.

Inspired by the spate of environmental crises hitting the world, from the Amazon wildfire to the desert encroachment in North Africa to the shrinking of the Lake Chad basin in his home country Nigeria, the collection urges readers to reflect on the endangered beauty of nature.

“Of all my 20-something books of poetry, none has confronted me with a more challenging combination of the urgency of content and complexity of execution than this new one,” said Osundare, professor emeritus currently at the New Orleans University.

Said Osundare, “I daresay the existential imperative of its content has been responsible for the pain that came with its composition and the uneasy relief I now feel upon its completion.

READ ALSO: Niyi Osundare becomes first African Cover Poet for World Poetry magazine

“There is something deeply spiritual, almost religious, about the mission and the message of the poems, and the many ways they have turned out to be denizens of that vital interface between the ecological and the cosmic.”

Osundare, widely revered for his lyrical lines and verses, and about the most laureated poet of his generation, has published over 18 collections, four plays, a book of essays, numerous monographs and articles as well as over 70 journals and magazines across the world.

He has received many prizes and awards, including the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) prize, the Cadbury/ANA Prize (twice), the Commonwealth poetry prize, the Noma Award, Tchicaya U Tam’si prize for African poetry (Africa’s highest poetry award), among others.

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Till debt do us part

admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 04:00:01 +0000

Till debt do us part

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admin Tue, 02/22/2022 - 04:00

Friday, February 11, 2022

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Till debt do us part

The national debt level of a country is a measure of how much the government owes its creditors. Economists are generally divided on the question of how much debt is too much debt, both with respect to the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) as well as the total dollar amount of the debt. Some economists are concerned that excessive government debt levels can impact economic stability with broader implications for exchange rate stability, external trade, economic growth and unemployment. However, others suggest that if the debt level is manageable, there is little cause for alarm.

In the October 2021 edition of its World Economic Outlook Report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted that the higher a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is, the higher the risk of that country defaulting on its debt. In one of its studies, the World Bank also suggests that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 77% or more during prolonged periods of time can cause economic slowdowns.

In its 2021 World Economic Outlook Report, the IMF lists Japan as having the world’s highest debt-to-GDP ratio at 256.9%.

Following not far behind are Sudan and Greece, at 209.9% and 206.7% respectively. Of the countries with debt-to-GDP of over 90%, ten are in the Caribbean.

Of course, notwithstanding the conventional wisdom of the IMF and World Bank, there are many nuances that should be considered when talking about debt. For instance, Haiti has an enviable debt-to-GDP ratio of 25%. Yet, this has not resulted in economic stability for Haiti, perhaps mainly because of the decades of political and security instability in that country. Moreover, countries such as Guatemala, Chad, the Congo and many others have debt-to-GDP ratios below 50% but have yet to achieve appreciable levels of economic development. Therefore, economic success or lack thereof transcends debt.

The other issue to consider is that not all debt is equal. Some countries are in debt, especially unsustainable debt, due to poor economic management. However, for others, debt is sometimes the result of factors largely beyond their control. For instance, IMF figures suggest that the annual cost of disasters for small states is nearly 2% of GDP. In some instances, the impact of natural disasters on small states can be double their GDP. When added over many decades, it stands to reason that the vulnerability of small states to natural disasters would inflate their debt levels since these states must either borrow to rebuild or borrow to build resilience.

At least every decade, there is a global shock of some kind. In 2007/2008, it was the global financial crisis. Just over a decade before that were the terrorist attacks on the United States (US) and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which impacted global travel and tourism, energy prices and other sectors. Currently, virtually all states are working to combat the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Another reality of small states is that they tend to be hardest hit by these global events and also take much longer to recover. Therefore, while recovering from one crisis, they are often hit by another. These confluences of events frequently push governments toward incurring debt to shore up social safety nets, maintain employment levels, build infrastructure and generally, prevent a hard economic landing.

Greece is a recent case study of how debt can lead to a sharp and catastrophic economic calamity. However, this is an extreme example. While debt should not be ignored, narrative around it should also be balanced. For small states especially, the key is to focus on manageable debt and transformative debt. Manageable is about being able to repay. Transformative is about using debt to invest in resilient infrastructure, economic diversification and competitiveness, and to enhance the availability and delivery of public goods. The hope is that strategic investments in these areas would ultimately reduce the burden of having to borrow over time.

Joel K Richards is a Vincentian national living and working in Europe in the field of international trade and development.
Email: joelkmrichards@gmail.com

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Blue takes over Five- A- Side football title

admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 03:40:01 +0000

Blue takes over Five- A- Side football title

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admin Tue, 02/22/2022 - 03:40

Friday, February 11, 2022

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Blue takes over Five- A- Side football title

Blue took reign of the Sweaterz Five- A – Side Football competition, which was contested last Sunday in the vicinity of the cricket nets at the Arnos Vale Playing Field.

Playing unbeaten in the four team competition, Blue won two of their matches and drew one.

Placing second was Yellow, while Neon Green was third and Maroon was fourth.

In the prize- giving ceremony that followed the round robin competition, Chad Haynes of Blue was the top goal scorer. Haynes scored four goals.

Najima Burgin of Yellow was the most outstanding player, his team’s MVP and the player adjudged to have scored the best goal.

Meanwhile, Zeddy Millington of Maroon was the best active player and his team’s MVP.

The Maroon duo of Michael Ollivierre and James Grant, were the oldest and youngest participants, respectively. Grant also won the penalty competition.

Also rewarded were the two other MVPs, with Juma Gilkes being the recipient for Neon Green and Damien Fernandez, Blue.

The first edition of the competition was held on Christmas Day, 2020, with Red winning the inaugural title.

Last Sunday’s competition was postponed from December, 25, 2021, because of the unavailability of the venue.

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Till debt do us part

admin — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 16:20:01 +0000

Till debt do us part

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admin Sun, 02/20/2022 - 16:20

Friday, February 11, 2022

Original Publisher

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Original Article

Till debt do us part

In its 2021 World Economic Outlook Report, the IMF lists Japan as having the world’s highest debt-to-GDP ratio at 256.9%.

Following not far behind are Sudan and Greece, at 209.9% and 206.7% respectively. Of the countries with debt-to-GDP of over 90%, ten are in the Caribbean.

Joel K Richards is a Vincentian national living and working in Europe in the field of international trade and development.
Email: joelkmrichards@gmail.com

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Blue takes over Five- A- Side football title

admin — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 16:10:01 +0000

Blue takes over Five- A- Side football title

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admin Sun, 02/20/2022 - 16:10