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Africa is facing a crisis of extreme inequality which is undermining growth, preventing poverty eradication and contributing to insecurity. This briefing paper shows that COVID-19 has deepened this crisis, and that the responses of African governments and international financial institutions are making little difference as debt burdens grow and austerity kicks in.

Every country in the world is experiencing an economic shock as a result of the Coronavirus crisis, and all governments must act now to protect their people from destitution. Unless dramatic action is taken to shore up the economies of developing countries, the crisis could push as many as half a billion people into poverty.

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed and worsened the depth of inequality in West Africa. It has pushed millions into poverty. However, the pandemic offers West African governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest heavily in inequality-busting policies by boosting public spending, making tax systems more progressive, and tackling joblessness and precarious work.

Widening inequalities are tearing our world apart. This is not by chance, but choice: “economic violence” is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people. But we can radically redesign our economies to be centered on equality, in which nobody lives in poverty, nor with unimaginable billionaire wealth—in which inequality no longer kills.

Rich countries at the OECD ministerial meeting on development cooperation have failed to collectively commit to a massive scale-up in aid budgets to help developing countries face the devastating and widescale impact of COVID-19. 

The G20 leading economies have sidelined development and food security at their summit in Los Cabos.

400,000 people in Gaza do not have access to regular water supply after 11 days of bombardment devastated electricity and water services and severely impacted the three main desalination plants in Gaza city , Oxfam warned today.

84 percent of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) COVID-19 loans encourage, and in some cases require, poor countries hard hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic to adopt more tough austerity measures in the aftermath of the health crisis, warned Oxfam today.

Less than half (49 per cent) of the 2.1 billion COVID vaccine donations promised to poorer countries by G7 countries have been delivered, according to new figures published today by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance.  

Six months ago UN Secretary General called in March for a global ceasefire tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are now sleepwalking towards a seventh year of war, and the people of Yemen can only surmise that the world has forgotten them.