Stockholm | Thursday
Africa is more in need of development aid than ever following the worldwide economic slowdown and the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the United States, the head of the African Development Bank, Omar Kabbaj, said in Stockholm on Thursday.
Kabbaj said that while there was ”an expression of strong support” for Africa from many industrialised countries, ”unfortunately, this comes at a time when most of these countries have important budgetary problems partly due to the recent slowdown in the economy and also to the September 11 events.
”Most of the countries that can help are saying … that for the time-being the resources that they have for these kinds of things are not easily assembled,” he told reporters at the close of a donors’ conference in Sweden for the poorest countries in Africa.
Kabbaj said Africa’s economic outlook had been dramatically affected by the two events.
”Before the recent slowdown in the world economy and of course the aggravating circumstances of the aftermath of the September 11th events, we were expecting rates of growth to go up from 3,0-3,5% to between 4,0 and 5,0% for 2002 and 2003,” he said.
”But unfortunately, we are now seeing that we are barely at 3,5%, which is … equivalent to the rate of growth of the population, so we are not growing at all in real terms,” he said, citing a ”sharp decrease” in tourism in Africa, a key industry for the continent’s economy.
International organisations and the African Development Bank have said that growth rates of around 7% across Africa are needed in order to reduce poverty by half. – Sapa-AFP