austerity

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the extreme inequality in Southern African Development Community countries, and pushed millions into poverty. Recovering from the pandemic, however, offers SADC governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do reduce inequality drastically and eliminate extreme poverty by 2030. 

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.

Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. 

COVID-19 has pushed millions into poverty in East Africa, and worsened inequality. However, building back during and after the pandemic offers East African governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do what their citizens want: make their economic systems fairer by increasing taxes on wealthy and large corporations, boost public spending, and improving workers’ rights.

The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty. 

Why is it taken for granted that a person is “successful” because they are a self-made millionaire? Who decides what is a success, and what is a failure? These questions help us understand what dominant narratives are, how they are shaped, and how they affect our lives. It’s time for them to be contested. With the right tools, change movements can start to tell a new story.

Dominant narratives promoting economic growth at the expense of state institutions and basic social services have long underpinned a neoliberal model of spiralling debt and austerity in the MENA region. This exacerbates political capture and inequality and takes shape in an environment of media concentration and shrinking civic space.

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.

West African governments are planning to “slash and burn” their way out of COVID-19 induced economic loss, reveals new analysis from Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) today. The organizations are calling for an urgent change of course as West African governments are preparing their annual budgets and participating in the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, which are crucial discussions to focus the recovery on fighting inequality and poverty.

Lebanon is extremely unequal and has been rocked by massive protests in recent months. The country is facing a financial crisis and is in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about a potential bailout programme.