The EconomistFebruary 6th 2021 Middle East & Africa 372
1per person than that recorded in countries
in western Europe.
Even countries that dealt well with the
first wave are struggling with the second.
In Senegal, for instance, the main public
hospital in Dakar, the capital, is asking
ngos for basic items such as masks and
gloves. Doctors believe that the case count
is many times higher than the official tally.
“We are afraid,” says a clinician.
The economic impact is also worse than
it looks. Because sub-Saharan Africa’s pop-
ulation is growing at 2.7% a year, gdpneeds
to grow at least as fast, or people will be-
come poorer. Last year the area’s economy
shrank for the first time in 25 years. Some
32m people fell into extreme poverty (earn-
ing below $1.90 a day), erasing five years of
progress against want, says the World
Bank. Millions more may have lost their
place in the nascent middle class.
Countries that rely on tourism were
devastated. gdpfell by 12.9% in Mauritius
and 15.9% in the Seychelles last year, as
beach-lovers stayed at home. Botswana’s
economy contracted by almost 10% as for-
eigners went without diamonds or safaris.
International bookings at camps in the
Okavango Delta fell by 95%. Game-poach-
ing is rising as locals struggle to get by.
Oil-exporting countries were walloped,
too. In 2020 their economies shrank by an
average of 4%, versus 0.4% among oil im-
porters (excluding South Africa). In Ango-
la, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil
producer, bottles of Château Pétrus costing
$3,000 can still be found in supermar-
kets—relics of the 2000s, when high oil
prices made Luanda one of the world’s
most expensive cities. But in 2020 Angola’s
economy slumped for a fifth year in a row.
Covid-19 has exposed the weakness of
Africa’s biggest economies, Nigeria and
South Africa, which generate almost half of
sub-Saharan gdp. Nigeria, the continent’s
largest oil producer and home to one-fifth
of sub-Saharan Africans, faces an “unprec-
edented crisis”, says the World Bank, which
seldom uses such blunt language. More
than two in three households are poorer
than a year ago. By 2022 the number of Ni-
gerians who are extremely poor is expected
to rise by 20m, to 100m.
South Africa was in its second recession
in two years before the pandemic, as a re-
sult of low commodity prices, corruption,
power cuts and scant investment. In 2020
itsgdpshrank by 7.8%, as joblessness rose
above 30%. The poor, women and the least-
educated have been worst hit.
Letsha Lekota (not her real name) lost
her job in March. In her village she signed
up to get government food parcels. They
never arrived. She suspects they were sto-
len—a common problem in a country
where even funds for personal protective
equipment and tablets to help kids study at
home have been looted. “What happenedto the food parcels?” she asks. “Councillors
tell us a different story every day.”
Not all the news is bad. Some 46 sub-Sa-
haran countries have introduced a total of
166 social-protection policies, such as cash
transfers or free electricity, though most
are still very small. The pandemic has
spurred several to digitise faster. Ethiopia
has adopted a law giving electronic docu-
ments legal force. Togo has issued welfare
payments using mobile money.
Another hopeful development is the Af-
rican Continental Free Trade Area, which
was launched on January 1st. It should
eventually ease trade within Africa. That
could boost manufacturing, the impor-
tance of which the pandemic has stressed.
The lack of domestically made surgical
masks and drugs made Africa “very, very
vulnerable”, says Akinwumi Adesina, pres-
ident of the African Development Bank.
“We must be more self-reliant,” says Ama-
dou Hott, Senegal’s economy minister.
However, when it comes to cushioning
the economic shock of covid-19, sub-Saha-
ran governments have fewer options than
rich countries do, mostly because they can-
not borrow as cheaply. On average they
spent just 3% of gdpto respond to the cri-
sis, compared with about 5% in the imf’s
group of “emerging markets” and more
than 7% in rich countries. Whereas central
banks in advanced economies have pur-
sued radical policies, those in Africa have
stuck to orthodox ones, lest they endanger
their macroeconomic stability. Only about
half have cut interest rates. The difference
is between doing “whatever it takes” and
“whatever is possible”, argues Abebe
Aemro Selassie of the imf.
In the next few years governments in
sub-Saharan Africa will face two huge chal-lenges: vaccines and finance. A few have
not fully grasped the urgency of the situa-
tion. South Africa, for example, is spending
a fortune bailing out the national airline
while dawdling over buying vaccines. Tan-
zania’s president, John Magufuli, casts
doubt on whether they even work. “If the
white man was able to come up with vacci-
nations,” he said, “then vaccinations for
aids...malaria and cancer would have been
found.” He told the health ministry not to
adopt a vaccine until it has been certified
by Tanzanian experts.
Most African governments, however,
are eager to get vaccines as fast as possible.
The biggest problem is that it will take time
for the world’s vaccine-makers to churn
out enough for everyone. Under covax, a
global vaccine scheme largely funded by
donors, governments are trying to get
enough for 20% of people in poor countries
by the end of this year. The African Union
has separately secured 670m vaccine
doses, roughly enough for a further 25% of
Africans, from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson
and AstraZeneca, though it is unclear when
they will arrive. Some countries are also
negotiating directly with suppliers, in-
cluding Chinese and Russian ones.
Whereas rich countries aim to vacci-
nate most people by the middle of this year,
John Nkengasong, the head of Africa cdc, a
public-health body, is aiming for 60% of
Africans to be jabbed by the end of next
year. Even that may be optimistic. The
Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister or-
ganisation, estimates that in most African
countries most people will not be inoculat-
ed until mid-2023 or early 2024 (see map).
So Africa may suffer waves of infection
after the disease has ebbed in the rich
world. This will cause more death and suf-
fering as well as economic pain. It may also
allow new variants to evolve, which could
endanger people in rich countries, too.
Repeated waves would worsen the fi-
nancing crises in many African countries.
This is the second big issue in the medium
term. To understand the scale of it, the imf
has totted up what the region would need
to pay to meet its external debt obligations,
fund its current-account deficits and
mount a modest response to the pandemic.
It estimated a shortfall of between $130bn
and $410bn, equivalent to 8%-25% of re-
gional gdp, for 2020-23. If that gap is not
filled, it will be hard for some countries to
avoid defaulting on debt or slashing spend-
ing on public services—or both.
Sub-Saharan governments are on aver-
age spending more than 30% of the rev-
enue they raise on paying debts, up from
about 20% before the pandemic. Public
debt as a share of gdprose by eight percent-
age points to 70% last year. It will rise high-
er still in 2021. Over half of low-income
sub-Saharan countries are in “debt dis-
tress” or at high risk of it, says the imf. It isWaiting game
Covid-19, when will widespread vaccination
coverage be achieved?
Forecast*Number of
countries
By year2021Late Mid Late From
2022 202337 30 37 84
*At Jan 22nd 2021
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit