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The President of the African Union Commission (AUC), Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat, in March 2020 established the AU COVID-19 Response Fund to strengthen a continental response to the pandemic. After raising $ 44 million in October 2020, another $ 300 million fundraising effort was launched this month.
In an interview with Afrique Renouveau‘s Kingsley Ighobor, Professor Benedict Oramah explains how Africa is raising funds and why more donations are urgently needed.
As Chairman of the Board of the AU COVID-19 Response Fund, what are your three key accomplishments so far and what challenges have you faced?
The AU COVID-19 Response Fund was established by the African Union as an emergency response to the pandemic. It was created primarily for the continent to have a pan-African approach to the pandemic. We have 55 fragmented economies. And if you remember April of last year, the big issues were Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and test kits, and the big savings were buying them all. Manufacturers weren’t going to listen to small economies placing orders of a few million or thousands of dollars. So the response fund was intended to help us deal with these issues.
From our creation, we have put in place the structures to allow us to operate efficiently. We have been asked to intervene in two areas: helping to raise funds and assisting in the use of funds. So we quickly created two key sub-committees for these. Of course, we primarily serve the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
We launched a fundraising exercise fairly early on with the support of the African Union, chaired at the time by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and with the assistance of the Chairman of the AU Commission, Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat; Africa CDC Director Dr. John Nkengasong; AU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Ms. Amira ElFadil and others. We are pushing for all commitments to be repaid. Much of the money comes from AU states and AU development partners – the German government, other countries in the European Union, the UK government, etc.
Do you have sufficient funds as we speak?
We don’t have enough funds because when we get the money, we use it. As far as mobilization goes, I think we have a solid reserve of pledges that we should collect. We organized a fundraising event with the participation of the private sector. And many of them have made commitments. What we’re doing now is making sure that we convert pledges into cash — pledges from governments, development partners, the private sector.
We want to raise more money, and to that end, we recently hired a fundraising consultant who will help us raise funds and convert pledges into cash.
Do we have enough money? No, the needs are numerous because we finance the quick responders. We fund countries that need treatment. Even now, we are supporting the Africa CDC with the vaccine rollout. So we need funds to do all the work that needs to be done. This is why we are planning a new fundraising initiative to ensure we complement other funds already mobilized, notably through the Africa CDC. We also encourage people to donate to Africa CDC. If we add up all the funds raised so far, except those that the Africa CDC raises separately, we are talking about pledges of more than 100 million dollars.
How difficult is it to get donors to redeem their commitments?
Well, things are tough these days. Businesses are in trouble; countries are in trouble. To that extent, yes, the repayment of pledges is arriving at a slower rate than expected.
However, I must congratulate many African countries which, despite the challenges, not only made their commitments, but paid. There are a few that we encourage to make commitments. The advantage of paying is that it facilitates our push to intervene across Africa. Let me give an example: we supported the purchase of drugs based on dexamethasone, one of the drugs used to treat COVID-19. Part of the funding came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and we matched that funding.
Let’s talk about logistics. Unless we can take care of the logistics of distribution, island economies will pay more than other countries. So when we make purchases, we do a fair and equitable distribution of some of these products so that countries get them at around the same time and at no additional cost. This is why we implore African countries that did not commit to commit and those that did commit but did not redeem to please redeem, while also calling on donors including business African women, to make donations.
Some of the donations received on the vaccine front include that made by MTN [a mobile telecommunication company]. This donation is separate from those coming from AVATT [Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team]. MTN pledged about $ 25 million, which we used for vaccine supplies.
How do you coordinate effectively with the Africa CDC and other pan-African institutions involved in the response?
The bottom [AU COVID-19 Response Fund] is a creation of the AU. We used to meet every week, but now we meet once a month. Meeting participants include the Africa CDC, and Board members are drawn from all regions of Africa – North, East, West and South. We have people from the private sector. Thanks to this mechanism, we reach countries. When we have to deal with things that are specific to certain regions, the members of the board of directors of that region will assume the responsibility.
Did Afreximbank pay to the fund?
Of course Afreximbank has provided support, not only because I am from Afreximbank, but also in the spirit of what the bank does. We pledged our donation and paid for it. We also make other contributions that we do not record as donations in terms of human resources. As I said, we have hired and are paying the salary of a fundraising consultant.
What support, if any, is Afreximbank providing to countries to contain the pandemic?
Well, let me start off by saying that we are very used to dealing with crises because we are a bank created from a crisis. Afreximbank was conceived in the 1980s when we had the debt crisis. Since we started our operations in 1994, there have been many crises and the bank has reacted. It is as if we have a toolbox to respond to a crisis.
That’s why, in March 2020, we launched the Pandemic Trade Mitigation Facility, which was created to help countries adapt to the crisis in an orderly fashion. Through this facility, we have so far disbursed about $ 7 billion, which has helped many countries pay off their outstanding trade debts. We knew that if we did not support countries and they default on commercial debt, recovery would be very difficult for them because markets have long memories but short vision. It really benefited the continent.
This facility includes a $ 200 million facility that we co-launched with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to support the manufacture of COVID materials on the continent – PPE, face masks and all that. . If you remember, around this time last year, everyone was rushing for these articles, and Africa suffered. We have therefore funded companies to reallocate their factories to the production of face masks and simple PPE.
For more information on COVID-19, visit www.un.org/coronavirus
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