 We should not be complacent about where Africa is. The number of cases is still doubling every two weeks and that is with very minimal testing. Welcome to World Versus Virus, a podcast from the World Economic Forum that aims to make sense of the COVID-19 outbreak this week. She's been Finance Minister of Nigeria, Managing Director of the World Bank and is Chair of the Board of GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwala tells us about the health and economic consequences of the pandemic for Africa. Right now, the prediction is for a contraction on the continent of about two percent. This has not happened for the past 25 years. So I have this fear that the two or three decades of growth and of development may be lost. Under COVID-19 exposes racial tensions around the world. We're here from Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Inequality has been here for so long and probably what has happened with COVID-19 pandemic is that great bear on this big planet. Subscribe to World Versus Virus on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcast to get it every week. I'm Robin Pomeroy and this is World Versus Virus. Regularly cited as one of the most influential women in the world by the likes of Forbes and Time, Ngozi Okonjo-Iwala had a 25-year career at the World Bank and served as Finance Minister under two Nigerian presidents. She also chairs the Board of GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines, which is likely to play a vital role in combating COVID-19. My colleague Max Hall spoke to her and started by asking whether Africa's success in fighting Ebola might help it weather this pandemic. The continent of Africa has had to deal with pandemics in the past. Do you think it's got very good muscle memory for dealing with this? I do think in this one, on this pandemic, African countries have some lessons that they can share with the world. I think we've been slightly better off now than we were in the past simply because we've had to deal with several infectious diseases like Ebola. So we've got platforms, we've had Ebola, we've also had polio and some of these diseases require a contact tracing capability in order to identify who has it, who have they had contact with and then be able to isolate these people. And because of this, what we've had to deal with in the past, several countries have this ability now to work with the community, to be able to educate the community through community workers, to do the contact tracing that is necessary when a case is identified and there's isolation. Yes, so we have that and I believe that in this pandemic, African countries have deployed this knowledge. You see very, very early on, as soon as the countries heard about the pandemic, they courageously implemented lockdowns immediately and through the machinery that they had at their command into operation. And I'm quite proud of the way that the countries responded. 39 countries out of the 51, I think possibly slightly more than that, implemented total or partial lockdowns right away. And I think this is smart and sensible because our health systems would be overwhelmed, weak to be able to deal with this. You've seen how the health systems of rich countries were overwhelmed and could not cope, let alone developing countries. But I want to mention one thing, the reason why I always say that it's courageous, that the government's implemented the lockdown is because unlike the rich countries, we have masses of people who are in the informal sector. Over 70% of people in the urban areas are in the informal sector. Meaning that they end their living on a daily basis. So if you now say that you implement a lockdown, it means that they cannot earn to feed their families. And on the continent, there has been this saying that the hunger virus might kill people before coronavirus. So you have to think of the economic consequences right away, as well as the health consequences. And this has not been easy, balancing the two. I've seen you speak on education, on economies, on trade, obviously on vaccines and health, on gender, on women's empowerment, people in the informal economy. What keeps you up at night about some of the issues that you fought passionately about? There are quite a number of issues that keep me awake. First and foremost is the fact that we should not be complacent about where Africa is at the moment. I know many people are saying that the number of deaths on the continent is quite low. But the trajectory of the disease is still up. We do not see flattening of curves because the number of cases is still doubling every two weeks. And that is with very minimal testing. We have not really been testing the way we have. Talking to some experts the other day, they say we have to reach one million tests, but they say we really need 30 million to be able to say what the trend is. So there's that. We should not be complacent because we don't know if we are just three or four weeks behind, or if we're really not going to get the disease, the hit in the way that people predict. I'm not complacent. So that's the first thing that keeps me up at night. How much longer will we see cases doubling? Will we see more deaths than we've seen now? That's still to be decided. The second thing is with the closure education schools have been shut down like in many countries all over the world. On the continent most schools have been closed. And you would see that in many countries children can continue learning at all levels because they can do online learning. They have access to the internet. But in many of our countries this is simply not the case. So it means that children are really out of school. And so they may be falling behind. And there's also the fear that girls in particular may not come back when schools reopen. So that really worries me and keeps me awake. On the other hand I also see an opportunity that if we can implement the infrastructure for learning in the future we could all actually reach more girls. Those who are not allowed to go to school might be able to learn at home. But that's what the future. The third thing that worries me is the impact mental and psychological on families and households. When people are not able to learn, they are not able to eat properly, there's more tension in the home, there's more abuse and violence. And it's been reported although the evidence we have now is anecdotal that there's been increase in gender violence in so many countries all over the world. And that really worries me as to what will happen to women and girls. And I believe that we need to place women, girls and youth at the center of any recovery just because we need to hear their voices and hear what it is they need as we're trying to make our economies recover. So those are just a few things. The final thing is how quickly will our economies actually recover. Because right now the prediction is for a contraction on the continent of about 2%. This has not happened for the past 25 years. So I have this fear that the two or three decades of growth that we've had and of development may be lost, we may be set back unless we act massively to reverse this and make sure it doesn't happen during the recovery period. People have talked about a debt crisis in emerging economies. What sort of fiscal space should be given? What actions do you think leaders should take? On the issue of the debt crisis, I want to say one thing that African countries, many of them have very little fiscal space to respond to this crisis because debt to GDP ratios have been climbing. On average, they're approaching 60% for the entire continent and in many countries they're already 60 and beyond, 80% in some even 100. And so this means that they do not have the room, the fiscal resources to respond to this crisis because they're facing the payment of these debts. I'll just give you an example. If you look at developed countries, they've been able to implement 8% to 10% of GDP fiscal stimulus to help the economies recover and to deal with the health crisis. Some have even gone as far as 20% of GDP. Japan announced a 20% of GDP fiscal stimulus. This is trillions of dollars. Contrast that with the African continent where the average stimulus has been 0.8% of GDP, one-tenth of what rich countries are able to implement. And this is because of the lack of fiscal space. So this leads to the issue of can there be a debt standstill for a couple of years in order to release resources into the hands of these governments to respond to the health crisis and the economic crisis rather than using it to service debt during these two years. And when I say standstill, I'm not saying that the countries will default or not pay. It just gives breathing room and an opportunity to look at the debt sustainability of each country and then to see which group of countries need their debt reprofiled so that they can pay on a longer term and perhaps at a more sustainable rate, which ones need some other kind of treatment because truly the debt sustainability analysis just doesn't work out. So we need to look at the various categories of countries and it's better to do it this way than to have a disorderly situation in future where in two or three years these countries are unable to pay. And I'm afraid this crisis, this pandemic, the impact will last a little bit longer than we think. It's not going to be over this year, even next year, it might prolong into 2022. And that is why these countries need breathing room. What are you mostly looking forward to after lockdown? People are talking of building back better. And I really believe in that. What does that mean? That means that we should not go back and do things the same old way we were doing the things before. It's now time to look for the opportunity in this crisis. And there's opportunity in so many different ways if we care to look for it. First, if we are rebuilding and creating jobs through infrastructure, do we build them back in the old way or do we look for low carbon emission, more climate friendly ways to do it? Look at the fact that emissions have dropped by about 17% during this time of the COVID crisis with the climate change. We've had a very good impact. So as we build back on infrastructure, let's think when it comes to energy, let's think renewables rather than the old fossil fuel. Let's think of cleaner ways to do things and greener ways. So that's one set of building back that I would think about. Second, supply chains. We've seen the supply chains for medical equipment and pharmaceuticals and medicines. This has really taken everybody a little bit by surprise that people, countries have become because of globalization very dependent on the manufacture of these essential supplies and equipment. They become dependent on certain countries. This is not necessarily a bathroom because globalization has been able to help. But I think that every country is going to reassess and say we need a certain basic minimum of this supply chain on the continent so that if something happens, we can immediately have access. And I think the African continent can see this as an opportunity to bring back some of that manufacture of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. Look, in Senegal, they developed a test kit for under a dollar. In Ghana, Nigeria, people are making masks everywhere. In a university where I'm chair of the board, they've made some PPE, some protective equipment, which can be scaled up. So we have the capability on the continent to manufacture some of these things. The opportunity is for us to invest in that, encourage others to invest and to trade among ourselves. If PPE is being manufactured in one country, we can trade and make the supplies available to a neighboring country. The African continental free trade agreement has come into force. We should use it to be able to trade among ourselves. So that's an opportunity. Secondly, we create more jobs for our youth. Imagine now 94% of our pharmaceutical supplies for the continent is imported. That's too high. I think we should seize the opportunity to manufacture more of our own medicines in place. So that's another opportunity. Thirdly, I think we need to rethink the way we make decisions. When we build back better, we need to put women and youth at the center of our decision making. Very often they are not consulted in the way they should and this pandemic has affected them differentially. Take women, for example, they are the bulk of frontline workers in terms of nurses, community health workers and so on. But are they really consulted in the way decisions are made? The answer is no. We need to put women back for all the reasons we talked about previously. We need to put youth back because it's all about them. It's about jobs. So in short, our decision making needs to change. There are many ways we need to reimagine the continent and the biggest one is we need to look at the structure of our economies. How do we really make real the diversification of the economies not to be so dependent on commodity exports? How do we make real the diversification of revenue sources? Because in some like my country, Nigeria, we really have a diverse economic base, but we have a monolith in terms of the revenue source. So our revenues come mainly from oil and gas. And yet we've got agriculture, we've got the creative sector, we've got some manufacturing, but we don't tax them as efficiently as we should to diversify the economic base. So Africa has to reimagine and rethink itself during this process. And I think we can use this as an opportunity. You can see, I've become very excited and passionate because, you know, Winston Churchill said, never waste a crisis. And I see that out of this crisis, we can really make many good things. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwala was talking to Max Hall. With lockdown measures impinging on our freedom of movement and tracking trade systems that might mean sharing more personal data than we would like, the pandemic has raised multiple concerns about human rights. Add to that the global protests against racism sparked by the killing of George Floyd in the United States and the often heavy-handed police response. Human rights have risen even higher up the agenda. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, spoke to us about the links between COVID-19 and race and inequality, and also how police and governments must deploy an intelligent, sensitive response to unrest. Let me tell you something. Last year, there were 80 in 80 countries, we have people protesting on streets. So inequality has been here for so long. And probably what has happened with COVID-19 pandemic is that late bear, all this inequality. We have seen that the virus does not discriminate, but the impacts do. And they usually impact the most vulnerable in a worse way. And as you see in the U.S., for example, I think there is a linkage on older inequalities of racism that was there, or minorities who have not had the same opportunities that others. That has been also very visible with the COVID-19 pandemic. Because when you see the number of cases have been infected, but particularly when you see the death toll is much bigger in Afro-American or in Latinos in the U.S. or in the U.K. is Afro-Afro-descent and Bangladeshis and some other Asians. And usually the poorest neighborhoods are more affected. So I would say inequalities are existing in our society that has not been addressed for years. And the rage of people with one particular situation, the death of George Floyd, the lack at the beginning of charging those offices. I mean, they were fired from the police, but they were not charged. Afterwards, charging only one and not the other three. Now, the four of them have been charged. But the thing is that people start feeling angry. Angry because of all this situation that they feel that they will never stop. Angry because the police brutality has not been one time. It has been in many other times. And it exists all over the world, I have to say as well. Of course, the security forces have to do the job. They have to ensure lockdown, they have to ensure the curfews, but there are ways and ways of doing it. And we have seen police brutality. And we have seen the use of ammunition or tear gas when the protesters were peacefully protesting. So it was on me, there are international protocols when you can use what, in which condition, when the danger is really your life in danger that you can use sort of a rubber bullet and in some distance and in some way and not to the face, et cetera, et cetera. But we have seen this. And that's what our call is to stop all this police brutality to, if I would say police forces should analyze their protocols and review the protocols. Leaders need to listen to what's going on, need to tackle the root causes. We condemn violence. And we condemn revolting and looting. But we do feel that the freedom of assembly and the freedom of protest, if it's peacefully, it has to be respected. And it has to be heard. Michelle Bachelet was speaking to my colleague Anna Bruce Lockhart. If you heard last week's podcast, you'll know all about The Great Reset, a project to bring the world's best minds together to seek a fairer, greener, healthier planet as we rebuild from the pandemic. If you want to know more on that, we have a new podcast for you. Search for The Great Reset wherever you get your podcasts. To hear global leaders in business, politics and civil society discuss how we can rebuild a better world after COVID-19. You can find all of our coverage of COVID-19 at weform.org and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and on Twitter using the handle at WEF. Thanks as ever to Gareth Nolan for his help producing this week's podcast. Please subscribe to receive it every week. Just search World Versus Virus on Apple, SoundCloud, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening and see you next week.