₦airaland Forum

Celebrating the international women's day with Christine Lagarde and IMFund staff. Women are an 18 trillion dollar emerging market!

"I saw this interesting post on www.venturesafrica.com where young Nigerians talk about the role of women in Nigerian society. It seems that we need to work with our youngsters to educate them about a woman's true potential. What do you think?"

https://www.facebook.com/VenturesAfrica/videos/992944957466132/

Poverty is Sexist: It’s time to start talking about it

http://www.one.org/international/blog/poverty-is-sexist-its-time-to-start-talking-about-it/

Honoured to be nominated in @EuropeAid’s #WomenInDev campaign. We must strive for equality together #IWD2016

At the wrap-up press conference, discussing the Declaration signed by African Health Ministers

African health ministers and high-level officials after signing the declaration to improve access to vaccines

Chairing a breakfast meeting with African Ministers of Health at the Ministerial Conference on Immunisation to discuss Financing issues

Every year over a million children lose their lives to vaccine-preventable diseases. They miss out on a basic package of vaccines. Former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a new Chair of GAVI, an international organization that supports vaccination for children. We ask Dr.Okonjo about the challenges the world faces in tackling the issue.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/common/player/radio/clip/?lang=en&ver=3&key=%2Fnhkworld%2Fradio%2Fprogram%2Fenglish%2Fradio%2Fupdate%2F201602251430_en_01.m4a&autoplay=true#popout

Observing the immunisation of babies and children at the health centre in Addis Ababa.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (25 February 2016) – With one in five African children lacking access to all needed and basic life-saving vaccines, ministers of health and other line ministers countries committed themselves to keep immunization at the forefront of efforts to reduce child mortality, morbidity and disability.

At a landmark Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa held from 24-25 February, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia the ministers signed a declaration to promote the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against vaccine-preventable diseases and to close the immunization gap by 2020. The conference, which was hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Offices for Africa (AFRO) and the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO) in conjunction with the African Union Commission (AUC), was the first-ever ministerial-level gathering with a singular focus on ensuring that children across the continent can get access to life-saving vaccines.

“Our children are our most precious resource, yet one in five fail to receive all the immunizations they need to survive and thrive, leaving millions vulnerable to preventable disease,” H.E. Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu, Minister of Health for Ethiopia. “This is not acceptable. African children’s lives matter. We must work together to ensure the commitments we make in Addis Ababa translate into results.”

A new report issued at the conference paints a mixed picture on vaccine access, delivery systems and immunization equity in Africa. Routine immunization coverage has increased considerably across Africa since 2000, measles deaths declined by 86% between 2000 and 2014, and the introduction of new vaccines has been a major success. However, one in five children still do not receive all of the most basic vaccines they need, three critical diseases—measles, rubella and neonatal tetanus—remain endemic, and many countries have fragile health systems that leave immunization programs vulnerable to shocks.

Addis Ababa Declaration on Immunization to be presented to African Heads of State

In June 2016, His Excellency Hailemariam Desalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, the host country for the conference, will present the Addis Ababa Declaration on Immunization to the African Heads of States at the 26th Summit of the African Union. Support from heads of state will further empower countries to increase efforts to mobilize resources for national immunization programs.

The declaration commits countries to increasing domestic financial investments in order to deliver routine immunizations and roll out new vaccines. The economic benefits of immunization are proven to greatly outweigh the costs, with recent research showing the benefits of preventing illness and lost productivity to be 16 times greater than the required investment in vaccines.

“We all agree that vaccines are one of the most cost-effective solutions in global health. Investing in immunization programs will enable African countries to see an outstanding economic benefit,” said Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chair of the Gavi Board and former Finance Minister of Nigeria. “If we can ensure that all African children can access life-saving vaccines, no matter where they are born, we will have a golden opportunity to create a more prosperous future for communities across our continent.”

As Ministerial Conference closes, new momentum builds for countries to prioritize immunization

The Ministerial Conference convened hundreds of political leaders, technical experts and advocates from across Africa and globally. The conference offered African policymakers and advocates a platform to celebrate progress toward expanding immunization coverage; discuss strategies for tackling the biggest challenges facing vaccine efforts; foster country ownership for sustainable financing for immunization; and advocate for greater engagement with all stakeholders to ensure sustainable demand for immunization.

“The Ministerial Conference achieved its goal of uniting leaders from across Africa behind the single goal of reaching every child with the vaccines they need,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “Now, we will carry this momentum forward from Addis Ababa, stay accountable to our commitments and close the immunization gap once and for all.”

“With the right mix of political will, financial resources and technical acumen, Africa is positioned to make an incredible leap in immunization coverage,” said Dr. Ala Alwan, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean. “Today is a first step in a journey that will take us to the last mile to reach every child with the vaccines they need.”

SOURCE: World Health Organisation (WHO)

Moderating session on sustainable immunization financing at #MCIA16

Excited to help #vaccineswork for children in #Africa alongside vaccine champions @jmkikwete & @GaviSeth #MCIA16

Spoke to @BBCAfrica's @annesoy yesterday about why immunization is the business of all government ministers #MCIA16

Roadmap for Developing Economies: A Conversation with Dr Ngozi Okonjo–Iweala

Interviewed by Akshan de Alwis, UN Correspondent

http://www.slideshare.net/DrNgoziOkonjoIweala/roadmap-for-developing-economies-a-conversation-with-dr-ngozi-okonjoiweala

by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Who is responsible for child health in government? The answer is everyone. The buck shouldn’t stop with health ministers; protection of child health needs to be a concern for all government, and all governments.

After all, children are not only the most vulnerable members of society, they are also a nation’s future. And, if this alone weren’t enough to make childhood disease prevention a national priority, compelling new evidence suggests it also makes sound economic sense, too.

With more than 30 vaccine doses administered worldwide every second, immunisation is already recognised as one of the most cost-effective health interventions. But a new study, published this week in the journal Health Affairs, now puts a more precise figure on it. According to this, for every dollar invested in childhood immunisation we can expect to save $16 in healthcare costs, lost wages and lost productivity due to illness. If you take into account the full value people place on living longer, healthier lives, then that return on investment increases even further to $44.

But if vaccines are such good value, why are one in five children globally still not getting access to even the most basic shots, with many countries having immunisation coverage rates of below 50 per cent, the vast majority in my home continent of Africa? And why are 1.5m children still dying every year from vaccine-preventable diseases?

Part of the problem is political will, particularly from finance ministers, thanks to a lack of understanding within governments that vaccines aren’t just good value for money, but are an investment. In addition, there is a widespread assumption within governments and beyond that childhood mortality is a matter only for health ministers. In reality, it has implications for just about every aspect of government.

Preventing illness through immunisation can have a huge impact in helping to contribute to the social and economic well-being of individuals, families, communities and countries. A healthy infant does not need medical treatment or care, both of which come at a cost. She also has a greater chance of growing into a healthier child, who is able to attend school and ultimately become a more productive member of society. And instead of caring for a sick child, her parents are in a better position to go out to work and increase their own ability to earn, which means they will have a greater disposable income to feed back into the economy.

All of this is not just good for boosting local and national prosperity; strong routine immunisation programmes also form a vital part of robust universal health systems, which are themselves critical to helping national leaders achieve economic and development targets. To put a figure on it, this latest study, which looked at 94 low and middle-income countries, predicts that between 2011 and 2020, childhood immunisation stands to offer up to $1.43tn in economic benefits.

However, if we wish to harness these benefits, as well as further economic returns beyond 2020, then we need to see greater long-term domestic commitment towards immunisation. Since 1990 we have seen childhood mortality more than halve and since 2000 witnessed more than 500m additional children receive vaccines, thanks to organisations like Unicef, the World Health Organisation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, of which I am the board chair. But if this kind of progress is to be sustained then we need to see strong immunisation policy backed up by long-term health spending allocation.

This means we need to stop preaching to the choir by focussing only on health ministers, and instead engage all aspects of government, in particular finance ministers. As former finance minister of Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, I know how important it is for health ministers to make a better case for immunisation to finance ministers when it comes to defending their health budget. They need to make finance ministers understand the critical role that reducing infectious disease has in boosting the economy, and the role they have to play in making that happen.

That is why the forthcoming Ministerial Conference on Immunization in Africa is so important. Taking place in Addis Ababa later this month, it brings together leadership across all government levels throughout the African Union, towards the common goal of universal childhood immunisation in Africa.

To some extent we have already seen some very positive signs of progress, not least with the former president of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, agreeing to become Gavi’s global ambassador for immunisation to spread the word to his peers about the benefits and value of vaccination that he saw in his own country.

In addition, we have seen increases in spending on health. Over the next five years we expect to see the 39 poorest African governments contribute around $6bn towards the cost of immunisation. If childhood mortality is to continue to fall, we will need to ensure that in the years to come that figure continues to rise.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is chair of the board of Gavi.

Source: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2016/02/17/saving-lives-saves-dollars/

As Southern Africa grapples with one of the worst droughts faced in years, African Risk Capacity is an option a country could use to insure itself against the natural disaster.

The African Risk Capacity is a specialised agency of the African Union designed to assist member states resist and recover from the havoc of natural disasters through a weather insurance mechanism.

"This has come about because of the experience we have had on the continent as we see increasing volatile changes in weather patterns, floods and droughts and climate change impacts - we have seen a lot of loss of life and livelihood, livestock, farmers losing everything,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Governing Board Chair of the African Risk Capacity.

"I am very proud that the African Union, with the support of the world food programme, The Rockefeller Foundation, The UK, Swedish and German government came together and said we want to develop a solution to this problem so that we don't have to wait for others - an agency that would sell weather based insurance to countries - a sort of public-private partnership,” she said.

Okonjo-Iweala explains that countries would purchase insurance against a crisis like drought for example and if the Africa Risk View system (a sophisticated database) sends an alert that the country has experienced a drought at the severity that warrants payment - it is then paid out within two to three weeks the country gets the money.

Africa has found solutions for its own problems, coming to the rescue of countries like Senegal, Mauritania and Niger when they were faced with natural disasters, but as Africa has limited resources financially would this plan of insurance be affordable and sustainable?

"I am not saying it is cheap but it is affordable - as of now we have 32 countries on the continent that are signatories and out of those, seven have actually purchased insurance."

"You pay depending on how many people you want to insure in the country, what geographical areas and so on, you can pay anywhere up to 3 million dollars per year but get pay outs that are multiple times that, for example for the three countries we paid out 26 million dollars - we covered 1.3 million people with this money," said Okonjo-Iweala.

She explains that it was able to disperse money for emergency food for cattle feed, saving lives and livestock. "We didn't wait months for the UN to raise money for us, we solved our own problems."

Right now with the seven countries as signatories, ARC has 178 million dollars in coverage and it wants to increase that to 1.5 billion dollars with 30 countries by 2020.

Okonjo-Iweala touched on how parts of Southern Africa are experiencing droughts, such as Zimbabwe, parts of Lesotho, and parts of South Africa.

“I think Zimbabwe is a signatory and they have actually done much of the work, if they had already paid for the insurance we would have been able to disperse money to them now - now they are waiting for an appeal for the UN and other agencies to bring money - but if it had just spent the 3 million, we might have been able to disperse multiples of that to them to start taking care of the people who are suffering.”

By: Tendai Dube

Source: https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/southern-africa/2016/02/16/dealing-with-drought-in-africa/

The African Risk Capacity is a specialized agency of the African Union designed to assist member states resist and recover from the havoc of natural disasters through a weather insurance mechanism. In an exclusive interview, CNBC Africa spoke Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Governing Board Chair of the African Risk Capacity, to get more insight on this agency.

http://www.cnbcafrica.com/video/?bctid=4756603740001

Great news! @JapanGov commits US$ 18.5 million to help #vaccineswork in West Africa after #Ebola: http://ow.ly/Yf6fT @Gavi

Thank you @JapanGov for your commitment to immunisation, supporting #vaccineswork in #Ebola-affected region http://ow.ly/Yf6fT @Gavi

Great to meet Japan's Prime Minister Abe @JPN_PMO and partners last week to discuss ‪#‎vaccineswork‬. Thanks for your ‪#‎globalhealth‬ leadership!

Abuja, February 8, 2016

ALLEGED EFCC INVESTIGATION OF OKONJO-IWEALA: MEDIA HEADLINES ARE MISLEADING AND UNTRUE

We want to clarify that some of the media reports alleging that the EFCC is investigating former Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, are misleading and untrue. This is clear from eye witness accounts of the Budget 2016 presentation by the EFCC at the House of Representatives and gaps in the reported stories.

The headlines are a misrepresentation of what the EFCC Chairman actually said during the event.

While the headlines claimed that the EFCC Chairman, in response to a question by an APC, member Hon Razak Atunwa, stated that Dr Okonjo-Iweala is under investigation, the actual words quoted in the same reports told a very different story.

His words:

“Very soon we will go into the petroleum industry. Such investigation requires that we have to build capacity, we have to bring in experts to enable us tackle what we are doing properly and the investigation must be conducted properly. We have internal lawyers and external lawyers. We have to pay insurance…”

The words said to have been spoken by the EFCC Chairman cannot support the lurid headlines that Dr Okonjo-Iweala is under investigation by the EFCC.

The Nigerian media plays an important role in our democracy and we urge them to be fair, balanced and factual in their reports.


Paul C Nwabuikwu
Media Adviser to Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Pleasure to meet Yasuhisa Shiozani of @JapanGov with discuss how Japan and @Gavi can make #vaccineswork for #everychild

どうもありがとう @RESULTSJapan for organising excellent discussion on #globalhealth – so much conviction for saving lives!

1. Great to hear from Dr Keizo Takemi about Japanese parliamentarians' plans to promote ‪#‎globalhealth‬ at ‪#‎G7‬

2. Delighted to discuss ‪#‎globalhealth‬ with Minister Seiji Kihara @MofaJapan_en – thank you for helping ‪#‎vaccineswork‬!

Our hearts go out to the Chibok people for the senseless bombing which happened yesterday.

January 26, 2016

Written by Akshan de Alwis, UN Correspondent

Born to academics in what was then still a British colony, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was a teenager when civil war broke out in Nigeria seven years after independence, and she ended up working as a cook for the Biafran rebels on the frontlines. After leaving Nigeria to study economics at Harvard and then MIT, she spent two decades at the World Bank, eventually becoming a vice president. In 2003, Okonjo-Iweala returned to Nigeria to serve as finance minister in the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, but she resigned in frustration in 2006. (To opponents of her reform agenda, she had become known as “Okonjo-Wahala,” a play on the Hausa word for “trouble.”) After another stint at the World Bank, this time as a managing director, she was invited back to Nigeria by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 to head his economic team and once again take up the post of finance minister. With the election of Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s President in March, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala now is a senior advisor at Lazard and the chair of the board of GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance.

In this unique interview, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, who served on the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post 2015 Development Agenda, reveals thoughtful and insightful guidelines for other developing countries, and discusses overarching goals for the advancement of the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

AD: During your tenure as Finance Minister, Nigeria became the biggest economy in Africa, overtaking South Africa in 2014. You are credited with the measures taken to turn Nigeria around. The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) development plan has been highly influential throughout the developing world. What are the lessons that you can share with other developing nations, both in Africa and around the world?

NOI: First of all, we tried to find out why has the country not been doing well all these years. You have to really dig. People talk very glibly about the lack of reforms or corruption and such, but you need to go beyond that—really get granular about why your country is not performing well. When we dug into it the first time in 2003, and did this study that lead to the NEEDS document and to the reform. It was finding out that one of the biggest sources of instability and lack of growth in the Nigerian economy—that had been growing at about 2.3 to 2.5 percent per annum, with a population growth rate of 2.8 percent—one of the biggest reasons was that we didn’t know how to manage volatility. Oil prices would go up, we’d spend everything, they’d then crash, and so on and so forth. So we really went to look at the core reason—no one had ever really done that in the country. The World Bank had done some studies, but none of the policy makers had really looked at this or paid attention. So when we tried to map this, we saw that our expenditures were volatile, incomes were volatile, GDP growth was volatile, and no country can reform with that kind of volatility. So of course we had to put in place a mechanism, and I think that was one of our biggest successes from the first time.

AD: It must be difficult maintaining economic stability when so much of Nigeria’s success is associated with the current oil price? Despite having a massive oil industry, Nigeria famously struggled with paying back its outstanding debts to the IMF and Paris Club.

NOI: The first concrete step was to bring in some macroeconomic stability into the economy, managing the fiscal framework much better. We put in place what they call an “oil-price-based fiscal rule,” which the linking of the way we budget to the price of oil and just smoothing out consumption and expenditures. So we put all those things in place, and you could see – the World Bank had estimated that Nigeria was losing three percentage points per year due to volatility, and lo-and-behold, when we developed something called the “Excess Crude Oil Account” into which we could just put the savings. When we decided to budget at an oil price lower than the one prevailing in the market, and delinked our budget from the volatility, we were able to save an amount over and above that price we used in the budget because oil prices were going up then – I saved them into a sort of stabilization fund, which we call the Excess Crude OilAccount, so in bad times we could draw on those savings to smooth our consumption. When we put all of these mechanisms into place, growth tripled – almost to six percent to seven percent per annum. So one of the key lessons is that macroeconomic stability matters – if you’re a natural resource producer, managing volatility matters, grappling with that matters.

AD: Oil is an exhaustible resource, and ultimately rather volatile. There have also been significant efforts to diversify Nigeria’s economy – to move away Nigeria’s economy from this central pillar of oil, right?

NOI: Very much so. The second thing we tried to do or beginning to do was some of the structural reforms that would be necessary for the economy. We tried to look at what were the biggest sources of fiscal drain, we looked at enterprises, and we looked at those places in the economy where we needed to tackle issues that could unleash private sector investment. Or course, infrastructure was one of the big ones. So we started with telecommunications reform, brought in the private sector, auctioned licenses, and lo-and-behold, that whole sector was unleashed. And you could see the effects: it used to be 0.8 percent of GDP, by my second time around, it had grown to 9 percent of GDP. Huge. Just as an example, and then we started reforming the power sector, we started looking at some of the really special issues, and then of course, the government was over. I’ve captured a lot of this in my book. So the lessons are macro stability, structural reforms, and building institutions. If you want to sustain development, and leave a lasting impact, you really need to put in systems, processes, and institutions that will drive development going forward – same with the SDGs. We really started to look, what are the missing pieces? Our whole financial management framework, if you’re going to finance the SDGs, you need to diversify your economy away from one resource, you need to strengthen your revenue management framework, you need to present leakages. We put into place financial management systems with biometrics that really began to build a framework that would take us away from cash management with the problems of corruption and leakages to electronic management systems for finance.

We also built institutions – you notice that in many developing countries, owning a home is not very easy. There is no robust mortgage system that works, like in America, the UK, and so on. This is also one of the reasons why people become corrupt – they try to steal money because they want to go and build their house, they don’t have any way to get money or resources, they have to save until the end of their working life before they’re able to own a home. That’s not really the way that it should be. In developed countries they tried to put in place a system so that you’re young, you get married, you can start paying, and by the time you retire you can own your home. So this is a big, institutional and social gap in many of our countries. So in Nigeria, the second time around, we tried to build the Nigerian mortgage refinance institution – a system that could begin to put liquidity into the mortgage system and allow our young people to have homes, that one day they can own a home. I also strongly believe that it contributes to tackling corruption, because all of the corruption of people stealing this and that is them trying to save up resources for homes and so on.

AD: How do Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play into the economic landscape of Nigeria? Many developing nations have struggled to foster SMEs growth, as many lack access to capital they require to expand. What steps did you take to better incorporate SMEs into Nigeria’s economic growth?

NOI: We also built, in order to finance SMEs – you find that they are excluded from the financial system; they don’t have access or it’s too expensive – so we built the Development Bank of Nigeria, and it’s just in its infancy now, but at full-fledge, it’s supposed to provide resources to SMEs so that they can begin to grow, since they’re the engine of job creation within the economy. This is another trend that is critically important: how do you foster growth within an economy, how do you help informal enterprises to grow and create more jobs, because often it’s not the huge businesses that create the most jobs. So building an institution that can begin to plug the gap and be sustainable – the same as many countries have done: the German’s have KfW, the American’s have the Small Business Administration. We don’t have these kind of things in our countries, and because we’re missing these institutions that means we continue to struggle. So the second lesson that I’d say we learned that is important for development is to really look for what is missing institutionally from your economic landscape, and try to put them in, because without those institutions built, you will not be able to develop. And then undertake the right structural reforms in those regulatory reforms, freeing up space for business that will enable your private investment to take place, because the government create the jobs needed. So you really need to the necessary things.

AD: You’ve now left the Nigerian government twice – each time before all of your developments could yet come to full fruition. What other plans did you envision for Nigeria?

NOI: The last thing I want to say that we have not yet done – we haven’t done it, so I’m not claiming it – but we seriously looked at this, because we saw that the type of growth that we were getting was coming with more inequality and was not creating enough jobs. So we got the growth finally, but when you looked at the quality of the growth, it wasn’t something that you could really be too happy about, because we have youth unemployment, the growth wasn’t creating enough jobs, and it was leading to more inequality, which is a problem that faces the whole world. So the last thing we’re doing is looking at the quality of that growth, to make sure that it’s being created in the right sectors that will create jobs, like agriculture for instance. We have a huge comparative advantage there, so trying to do the natural thing and enable growth in the agriculture sector and not just growth but development along the value chains to create jobs. Trying to encourage services, even the creative industries, like the film industry, the arts. And the thing with this sector is that it creates a lot of jobs without government help, this was happening on its own. But they were getting to the point where they needed additional help. Nigeria has developed a whole film industry, called Nollywood, which is the third largest in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood, and it’s created a lot of jobs – 200,000 direct jobs and about one million indirect jobs. So encouraging the film industry, which went from 0 percent of GDP ten years ago to about 1.4 percent now.

We’re also working on a social safety net, for those at the very bottom of the ladder, because sometimes people are so down they cannot talk advantage of the economic improvements. So how do you pick them up and make sure that their children do not fall into the poverty trap all over again? So we’re looking at what the Brazilians, Colombians, and Mexicans have done so well. The building of a national social safety net centered around conditional cash transfers, and using that as a basis to make sure that we start transforming the lives of child at the bottom end of the income ladder by giving them, their parents, their mothers in-fact, cash-transfers to make sure they send them to school, get them immunized, and things like that so that the next generation would not also fall into poverty but have the tools to which to escape poverty. That last part is what we were working on when the government was over, and it’s something that some would suggest that some countries should look at if they really want to improve the quality of growth and move towards the SDGs.

AD: Do you see developments like Mobile Banking as a potential vehicle to help with this process of normalizing growth?

NOI: Mobile banking has taken off in places like Kenya like wildfire, and in Nigeria it’s taken off. It’s not as well as in Kenya, but it’s really helping. For instance, it’s also helping to fight corruption. One of the ways Akinwumi Adesina, the Minister of Agriculture and current President of the African Development Bank, during my second time in government, got rid of the corruption in fertilizer and subsidies payments to farmers – there was a lot of corruption, so that only 11 percent of farmers were ever getting their subsidies and fertilizer – and what it was getting rid of the intermediaries, the middle-men and women who helped to distribute this fertilizer. What he did instead was develop an electronic wallet, such that farmers, through their mobile phones, would receive electronic vouchers, which they could send to the agro-dealer. The agro-dealer can now go to the bank and submit these vouchers and collect their money.

AD: As the final word, you’ve passionately fought corruption throughout your career. What is the role of fighting corruption and illicit cash flows in achieving the SDGs?

NOI: The size of the flows, not just African countries, but worldwide – is estimated at one trillion dollars a year according to International Financial Integrity. But even if you just look at the costs to Africa, 50 billion (from the Thabo Mbeki report on illicit financial flows) is significantly more than the aid flows to the continent. So in terms of the numbers, the issue of transparency, and the issue of fighting corruption, the world needs to pay very strong attention to this issue of illicit financing and illicit capital flows. Harnessing this will help with the financing of some of the goals of the SDGs.


SOURCE: http://www.diplomaticourier.com/2016/01/26/roadmap-for-developing-economies-a-conversation-with-dr-ngozi-okonjo-iweala/

UN Photo by Devra Berkowitz

At the World Economic Forum, ‪#‎Davos‬
‪#‎WEF16‬ ‪#‎WEF‬

By Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala & Janeen Madan 01/19/16

This essay is part of a special edition being published in partnership with Foreign Affairs, titled “African Farmers in the Digital Age.” This anthology explores the future of African food systems and the role that digital solutions can play in overcoming the isolation of smallholder farmers and speeding up rural development. Look for it at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/anthologies on February 15.

Financial Inclusion Matters for Africa’s Smallholder Farmers
Agriculture forms the backbone of African economies, accounting for 32 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). A majority of the continent’s farmers earn their living on small plots of less than two hectares, which represent 80 percent of all farms across sub-Saharan Africa. But these smallholder farmers are largely excluded from financial services and are therefore constrained from improving their wellbeing and transforming their farms into economically viable businesses. Although smallholder farmers face a number of challenges to raising productivity, bridging the financial access gap must be a priority.

There is much literature on expanding financial inclusion among the world’s poor. The issue has been a development priority since Group of Twenty (G20) leaders launched the Financial Inclusion Action Plan in 2010. But Africa’s smallholder farmers have received little attention, and women farmers—who make up half of the continent’s agricultural labor force—have received even less.

Being excluded from financial services has negative consequences for smallholder farmers. Access to credit can help raise farm productivity by expanding access to inputs as well as better storage, marketing, and processing. Access to savings instruments at harvest enables families to put money aside and helps smooth consumption at other times of the year. Access to payment platforms can offer a secure and efficient way to make transactions. And access to insurance products can protect against illness and weather-related shocks. In the absence of these formal mechanisms, smallholder households often rely on informal instruments. Although they are accessible and flexible, informal financial services can also be inefficient and costly in the short term, and they do not always offer the services needed to help transform subsistence farming into a profitable business.

Understanding farmers’ needs, and the range of financial services they rely on to meet those needs, must be the first step. But translating this knowledge into tailored products will be even more critical. While evidence is still emerging, digital solutions are at the forefront of these efforts.

Smallholder Farmers Are Excluded From Financial Services
Large gaps remain in meeting the financial needs of smallholder farmers across sub-Saharan Africa. The Global Financial Index, or Global Findex, underscores the extent of their exclusion from the formal financial sector. Across forty-two African countries in 2014, only 29 percent of adults in rural areas had a mobile money account or an account at a bank or microfinance institution (MFI), compared to 34 percent at the national level. Although access to bank accounts in rural areas remains low, this represents an increase from 24 percent in 2011. Poor households and women are even more excluded than the rural population generally. Poorer households are much less likely than richer households to have a formal account (25 percent compared to 41 percent), and there is also a significant gap between women and men (30 percent compared to 39 percent).

While more than half of all rural households saved and borrowed money over the past year, only a small percentage used the formal sector. Among those who reported saving, 13 percent saved at a bank or an MFI, and 25 percent saved with a community savings group. The majority saved money under the mattress or in tangible assets such as livestock. Rural households are also excluded from formal sources of credit; only 6 percent borrowed from a formal institution. Forty-two percent of those who reported borrowing turned to family and friends, and 5 percent borrowed from an informal lender, such as a trader or processor. Because they are borrowing informally, the interest rates are usually between two and ten times higher than commercial rates. Furthermore, only slightly over 6 percent of farmers reported purchasing crop or livestock insurance. Finally, a majority of farming households received payments from agricultural sales in cash; only 8 percent received payments via mobile phone, and 7 percent received money directly to a bank or MFI account.

Demand and Supply Barriers Limit Access to Formal Financial Services
A number of demand- and supply-side constraints explain why smallholder farmers are excluded from formal financial services. On the demand side, smallholder households cannot always afford fees or minimum balance requirements to keep accounts active. In Uganda, for example, annual account maintenance fees are almost 25 percent of GDP per capita. Rural clients must travel long distances to reach bank branches; to do so, they have to pay for transportation and forego daily wages. In addition, farmers do not always have the formal documentation, such as identification cards and land titles, required to open an account. There is also evidence of a lack of trust in financial institutions and low financial knowledge among the poor. For smallholder farmers in particular, the repayment cycles for standard bank and MFI loans often do not align with seasonal cash flows. Finally, gender dynamics further constrain women’s access: Given multiple household responsibilities, women are often time constrained, which limits their ability to engage with formal financial services. Women also lack formal land titles, even more so than men.

On the supply side, smallholder households are expensive to serve because a majority live in rural areas. And because agriculture is highly susceptible to weather shocks, financial providers perceive farmers as too risky to lend to. In addition, formal financial institutions often lack information about the credit histories of poor rural farmers, as well as the knowledge and capacity to serve agricultural households. Lenders sometimes fail to see farmers as a substantial source of savings and have therefore not traditionally marketed specific products to them.

Digital Innovations Are Helping to Bridge the Gap
Digital technology has the potential to address multiple demand and supply barriers by offering a new delivery platform to reach underserved clients. Mobile connectivity is rapidly expanding across sub-Saharan Africa; a 2014 Pew Research Center survey in seven African countries found that roughly 80 percent of people own mobile phones. Mobile platforms can allow clients to access bank accounts more easily, and also reduce delivery costs for service providers.

To effectively close the gap in the availability of financial services, it is essential that digital products meet the unique financial needs of smallholder farmers. Digital by itself is not enough. Therefore, a complete understanding of these households’ financial needs must be a priority. The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), housed at the World Bank, has focused much-needed attention on smallholder farmers. Through its Financial Diaries of Smallholder Households project, CGAP aims to better understand how farmers in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Pakistan use financial services. Initial findings show that while smallholder households rely on multiple sources of income, including wage labor and off-farm businesses, agriculture accounts for 40 percent of earnings.

However, findings also suggest that income from agriculture is seasonal, creating unique cash-flow challenges. Farmers receive a bulk of their income at harvest, making it difficult to cover expenses for school fees, health care, and religious celebrations throughout the year. Farmers require capital at the start of the planting season to purchase seed and fertilizer. During the growing season, households must stretch available resources until the next harvest. Income from agriculture can also be risky; crops are susceptible to weather fluctuations, pests, and disease. Considering these diverse needs, financial services for smallholder farmers must move beyond credit for agriculture and include insurance, savings, and transfers to smooth consumption. This approach can help ensure financial instruments have a transformative role on the lives of smallholder farmers.

A suite of digital financial innovations for smallholder farmers has cropped up across the continent. These examples are neither exhaustive nor fully proven in their impact. But they nevertheless highlight the tremendous potential to connect Africa’s smallholder farmers to financial services by addressing both demand- and supply- side barriers.

In one model that addresses demand-side constraints, financial institutions are rolling out branchless banking to serve rural clients. For example, Opportunity International hires agents who drive to rural areas and use mobile phones to register new clients, deposit savings, and collect loan payments. In addition, mobile bank accounts are expanding across the continent, most rapidly in East Africa. M -Shwari in Kenya and M-Pawa in Tanzania allow M-Pesa clients to take out loans and make interest-earning savings deposits. Using a secure and familiar platform, rural clients do not have to travel to access accounts, pay fees, or meet minimum balance requirements. These are all important factors that can underpin widespread adoption.

But there are still challenges in reaching the rural poor, including limited network coverage and low financial literacy. Furthermore, recent evidence shows that although account ownership has increased, regular use has lagged. Therefore, products should be designed to meet smallholder farmers’ needs to help ensure that that they adopt and use them. To address low financial literacy, for example, the nongovernmental organization TechnoServe trains smallholder farmers in Tanzania on how M-Pawa accounts work in order to encourage the farmers to use them.

Other programs are using mobile platforms to deliver credit and savings products specifically designed for smallholder farmers. For example, One Acre Fund has developed an asset-finance model with a flexible repayment schedule that helps over two hundred thousand farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania purchase high-quality inputs at the start of the planting season. Farmers make a prepayment (10 percent of the loan) prior to receiving inputs and have the flexibility to repay the remaining loan amount in any increment on any schedule, as long as they repay fully by harvest time. In countries like Kenya, where the mobile money infrastructure is well developed, farmers make repayments via M-Pesa. This loan product has helped farmers increase their earnings per acre by 50 percent.

In addition, access to savings can play an important role. MyAgro, a mobile platform, offers a commitment savings device to farmers in Mali and Senegal. Rather than paying a lump sum to purchase seeds and fertilizer at the start of the planting season, farmers save small amounts throughout the year. Clients buy MyAgro scratch cards from local stores and make deposits into their savings accounts, just like buying credit for a mobile phone. Clients of MyAgro have increased their harvests, and raised their incomes by more than 70 percent compared to non-client farmers. Both these uniquely tailored products could serve as effective models for financial service providers.

Digital technology can also be leveraged for payment transfers. Nigeria’s mobile wallet program, established in 2012 by the Central Bank and Ministry of Agriculture, has digitized voucher distribution for subsidized fertilizer. The platform’s fourteen million subscribers can use electronic vouchers to buy subsidized fertilizer from local agro-dealers. This platform is playing a critical role in connecting farmers to the formal banking system, and it has helped reduce corruption in fertilizer distribution by wiping out middlemen. Between 2013 and 2014, Nigeria’s Ministry of Finance also provided additional budgetary incentives that enabled the Ministry of Agriculture to scale up the mobile wallet program’s reach to an additional 2.5 million women farmers.

According to CGAP, the mobile wallet platform reaches twice as many farmers as the previous distribution system at one-sixth of the cost. The Nigerian government has also established a mechanism to encourage financial institutions to lend to the agriculture sector. The Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) addresses an important supply-side constraint by providing a credit risk guarantee that covers between 30 and 75 percent of incurred losses on loans. NIRSAL enables the financial sector to expand its client base, and smallholder farmers and small and medium-sized agribusinesses gain access to financial services.

Keeping Up the Momentum
Promising innovations across the continent are leveraging the broad reach of digital technology to connect farmers to the formal financial sector. Ongoing research is providing rigorous evidence to better understand how these services are affecting smallholder households. There is no silver bullet and the gaps are still large, but there is tremendous international momentum around the issue of financial inclusion. Bringing Africa’s smallholder farmers into the spotlight and expanding their access to financial services will be critical to achieving universal financial inclusion and accelerating smallholder farmers’ contribution to the continent’s economic growth.

Author's Personal Story
As a child, I spent Saturdays accompanying my widowed grandmother on the very long trek to her farming plots. We would set out before sunrise, me carrying water and her carrying food and implements, like small hoes and machetes. The main job was weeding between the mounds of yam. If they were in good shape, we would turn to the adjoining maize and vegetable plots. Lunch was roasted yam or plantain with palm oil and red pepper, which is still one of my favorite meals. I’d overhear my grandmother talking with other farmers about something called fertilizer or about new varieties of cassava and maize that could double output. But they had neither the money nor the know-how to make use of these tools.

From the time I left Nigeria to study economics, I was always trying to figure out what could be done to make farmers’ lives better.

For my doctoral thesis I chose the topic of "Rural Financial Markets in Nigeria" and spent months living with rural households all over the country to understand their savings, borrowing, and consumption patterns. That was from 1979 to 1981. While numerous experiments in recent years have yielded promising solutions, the work won’t be done until we’ve revolutionized the lives of African smallholders.

SOURCE: http://www.cgdev.org/publication/ft/shine-light-gaps?utm_source=160119&utm_medium=cgd_email&utm_campaign=cgd_weekly&utm_&&&

With President Alassane Ouattara, President of Côte d'Ivoire

Joint comment: Incoming chairwoman of Gavi Alliance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and WHO Assistant Director General Dr Flavia Bustreo

With climate finance as a key lever in the Paris accord, countries concerned with the costs of a low-carbon development pathway may borrow a page from the playbook of health finance experiences. Societies that invest in low carbon growth will likely emerge as those with the healthiest and most productive workforce according to our authors.

As negotiations in Paris drew to a resolution earlier this month, developing countries' concerns about having carbon "space" for development and the notion of "differentiated responsibilities" for cutting carbon emissions were common refrains. Similarly, fulfilment of a pledge by developed countries to invest at least $100 billion annually in low-carbon and renewable technologies needed by developing countries is regarded as essential to the agreement's future success.

Now that the treaty has been signed, however, some broader reflections on its economic implications might be useful drawing from experiences and lessons learned in a linked, but still under-recognized arena of climate impacts, and that is the health sector.

Its apparent that health and climate are inextricably linked. The same inefficient fuel and energy technologies driving CO2 emissions are also driving a rising toll of air pollution emissions - which stands at some 7 million premature deaths every year. Tens of thousands of people die every year from direct climate impacts, including heat exposures, severe weather, drought and under-nutrition, and climate-sensitive diseases. And those numbers will rise sharply in the face of inaction, posing huge costs for developed and developing economies.

But what's equally important - and yet often ignored - is that countries that take the most assertive action to reduce climate pollutants of all sorts - short and long-lived - may also benefit the most health-wise, socially, very immediately, and in terms of their economic growth.

Start with the basics
Let's start with the basics. Healthy workers are generally more productive than unhealthy ones, and thus healthy populations support economic growth. Between 2000 and 2011, almost one quarter of real income growth in low- and middle-income countries resulted from a healthier population and workforce.

Much of this gain can be traced to the huge new investments in key disease control campaigns over the past several decades - including dramatically stepped-up access to vaccines, anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDs, and antimalarials. These investments led by the global health sector included reduced prices for essential medicines, vaccines and medical technologies, deemed essential to combat diseases that stunted and threatened development in low- and middle-income countries, and even globally.

Such investments proved to be highly cost-effective because of the lives saved and the disease toll avoided. Rates of HIV/AIDs infection, malaria and other neglected diseases of poverty are on the decline.

Now, as the world grapples with the challenges related to climate change ecosystem impacts, direct health impacts of extreme weather and rising temperatures, and also a rising epidemic of non-communicable disease (NCD), a similarly "health-conscious" campaign of smart growth strategies in the energy, transport, housing and other sectors can tackle all three factors at once, for a triple benefit.

Air pollution--driven by many of the same dirty energy sources as climate change - is a key factor in the NCD epidemic. It is responsible for a large share of deaths from heart disease and stroke as well as respiratory diseases and cancers. Indirectly, as well, traffic injuries, physical inactivity and obesity also are linked to carbon-intensive and unsustainable development, particularly in cities.

So low-carbon development strategies can strike at the nerve centre of the growing epidemic of non-communicable diseases. Sustainable development in rural areas and "smart cities" can help promote access to clean household sources of energy, and ensure safer, healthier mobility and more physical activity - critical to women and children's health, as well as health throughout the life-course. Reducing air pollution can also boost crop productivity, which is stunted in areas with heavy ozone concentrations, helping to protect food security.

Win-win for national-based actions and economic growth
Countries that do the most may also benefit the most locally and immediately - a real win-win for national based actions, and good news for economic growth.

The savings in health and health care costs enjoyed by shifting to low carbon and renewable energy sources have been estimated in the trillions of dollars by the International Monetary Fund, offsetting by far the costs of new investments. And a healthier population can help spur healthy economic growth - growth delinked from carbon emissions.

In South Africa alone, for example, treatment costs from kerosene-related burns and poisonings have been estimated at nearly US$30 million annually. Switching to cleaner, safer sources of energy could thus generate large, immediate savings that quickly justify new investments in climate adaptation and mitigation projects.

In the longer term, the potential savings in the direct costs of climate-induced human suffering and healthcare costs are, on their own, significant enough to justify major investments now. Nigeria, for instance, faces a greatly increased risk of flooding due to climate change, which by 2030 could affect the health of an additional 801,700 people in a variety of ways including drowning and outbreaks of infectious diseases. Averting or mitigating this risk would also avert the higher health-related costs that go with it.

Given that health is effectively an economic asset for countries working hard to identify fresh financing to address climate change, it is crucial they consider it as a key factor among the actions needed for climate adaptation and the co-benefits of mitigation, as they begin to implement the Paris treaty.

Financing actions on climate change
The ways in which current investments in carbon-intensive growth are resulting in ill-health as well as climate change are well documented by a number of major international reports. A recent study by the International Monetary Fund estimated that fossil fuel combustion is effectively "subsidised" by approximately US $5.3 trillion a year - up from US $2 trillion in 2011 - because polluters rarely pay for the health or environmental damage they cause.

The same study further concluded that placing a "nationally appropriate price on carbon" would cut outdoor air pollution deaths (currently 3.7 million per year) by half, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 20%. This would raise approximately 3% of GDP, or US $3 trillion per year. This revenue could be reinvested in growth-enhancing public spending - for example in health, education and the green economy. It would also save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Health is, in the IMF analysis, key to the arithmetic, accounting for about half of the overall value of the gains from a nationally appropriate carbon price. The reductions would mainly be in deaths and disability from the products of coal combustion.

In reality, the IMF's estimates of the health gains are probably conservative. In addition to the potential lives saved from reducing outdoor air pollution there is strong evidence of the enormous health gains that could be made, for example, by introducing cleaner and more efficient household energy to reduce indoor air pollution (currently estimated at 4.3 million deaths per year), and more sustainable urban transport systems that facilitate walking and cycling, reducing deaths from physical inactivity (currently 3.2 million deaths per year).

Measuring costs and benefits, investing in health
Low- and middle-income countries are well aware of the health and economic benefits from local action against climate change, but some may be discouraged from investing unless the advantages are spelled out during implementation of the new treaty. Conversely, proper recognition could be a catalyst for action.

The first challenge for developing economies is to reject the old technologies and engrained attitudes that have given us polluting and inefficient systems. The second is to select the best and cleanest energy options and to leapfrog inferior or polluting ones. The third is to avoid the narrow view that measures "costs" and "benefits" only as financial transactions. The health community is understandably wary about putting a price on a human life, and takes a rights-based approach that values every person equally.

So, by cutting carbon emissions, countries can save lives and free up huge sums to help finance action against climate change. These are compelling reasons to make health a cornerstone of the work that begins in the new reality introduced by the COP21 Paris Agreement.

Merry Christmas Friends! May all that concerns you and yours remain blessed in this season of joy.