Some of Africa’s top business leaders joined the UNDP regional bureau for Africa’s partnership initiative, African Influencers for Development (AI4Dev), in an emergency meeting this week to focus actions needed for a coordinated continent-wide response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UNDP said in a statement.

The AI4Dev initiative was at the heart of the UNDP’s new partnership strategy for Africa, engaging with African "champions" already working to drive sustainable development across the continent. It was a powerful coalition of current and future African leaders in business, academia, and the arts on one big platform to help Africa steer its own development agenda.

Founding members included Professor Benedict Oramah, President of Afreximbank; Rob Shuter, President of MTN; Dr James Mwangi, CEO of Equity Bank; Temitope Shonubi, founder of Sahara Energy; Samaila Zubairu, President of Africa Finance Corporation; Dr Amy Jadesimi, MD of LADOL; Admassu Tadesse, President of TDB; Samba Bathily, CEO of ADS; Dr Edem Adzogenu, co-founder of the AfroChampions Initiative; and Dr Eleni Gabre-Madhin, Founder of blueMoon and Ethiopian Commodities Exchange. 

“The private sector has a major role to play, as we can move very quickly to bring our assets and expertise to work,” Shuter said.

Jadesimi said any response had to be collaborative. “Africa needs different solutions from the rest of the world, and we need to find those solutions together. We have an opportunity to come out of this stronger if we lean heavily into local manufacturing. But we must organise in order to bring to bear the strengths of [the] African private sector in this response.” 

Convening the meeting, Ahunna Eziakonwa, assistant secretary general and UNDP regional director for Africa, stressed the importance of a collaborative approach to the problems posed by Covid-19. “UNDP is committed to work with the private sector in their unified response efforts, particularly in issues of procurement, governance, financing, communications, and technology, bringing our decades of expertise, supply chains, and wide reach across Africa to mobilise the local private sector to get critically needed materials to the most vulnerable,” she said.

The global pandemic had impacted almost every aspect of Africa’s economic and business landscape and redrawn the prospects for growth across the continent. According to the African Union’s Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Covid-19 had been documented in 52 African countries with rising numbers of cases.

As governments started to deliver urgently needed social protection, the private sector could play a role in ensuring local supply, including, where possible, through local production of urgently needed personal protective equipment and food, the statement said.  

African business could lead the way in strengthening preparedness through supporting procurement; response through unleashing networks of medical service providers; and recovery through making available critical necessities.

Individually, AI4Dev members were stepping up and showing their commitment through their own initiatives. For example, Afreximbank’s Professor Oramah announced a US3 billion facility to help its member countries weather the socio-economic and health impacts of Covid-19. Gabre-Madhin was helping local SMEs to manufacture and distribute essential medical equipment.

“We are currently running a campaign to manufacture and distribute 500,000 masks in Ethiopia in the coming weeks. Our network of small- and medium-enterprises are fast tracking 3D printing prototypes of low-cost materials, such as 3D-printed face shields and ventilator valves,” Gabre-Madhin said. 

“Leveraging private sector support is integral to UNDP’s Covid-19 response and we look forward to seeing the footprint of Africa’s influencers for development,” Eziakonwa said. 

African News Agency