The African Development Bank (AfDB) and international experts have called for a concerted response and broader cooperation between public development banks and actors in the field to provide concrete responses to fragile countries whose situations have been worsened by the global Covid-19 crisis.
Vice President for Regional Development, Integration, and Service Delivery at the AfDB, Khaled Sherif, Head of GIB Asset Management, Katherine Garrett-Cox, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer, and President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Shinichi Kitaoka, T made the call during a virtual session on “Human Security in Fragile Contexts: Scaling up Humanitarian and Resilience Investments,” on the second day of the, “Finance In Common Summit” at the weekend.
Noting that the pandemic was a health crisis, which could destroy 30 million jobs and increase the number of people living in extreme poverty to 450 million, Sherif expressed optimism about the willingness of development actors to work together to strengthen and stabilise the situation in at-risk regions and fragile countries.
“For too long, we have left the issue of the development of vulnerable populations to humanitarian organizations, NGOs, foundations, and civil society actors.
Now we need to create new and strong alliances to increase the impact of humanitarian and development actions for rural communities and vulnerable populations,” he said. Sherif reiterated the African Development Bank’s strategy, saying “we are convinced that only an integrated Africa is a resilient Africa, creating prosperity across the continent.”
