Analysis

It is not the Corona Virus that brought troubles to and exposed the inadequacies of county public health services.  Before Covid-19, county governments were widely criticized for their lack of hospital beds capacity, quality of health care and the treatment of healthcare workers.  Discouraged by poor conditions of work and remuneration, and after a prolonged nationwide strike, healthcare givers left county public healthcare service in droves

African countries are very diverse in terms of their current debt situation, debt management practices and government securities markets. Debt management is, therefore, a vital component of the appropriate fiscal policy for the management of the negative impact of COVID-19 on the economy of African countries. However, debt management alone cannot solve structural problems and macroeconomic imbalances. Rather, a holistic approach including an appropriate debt level, debt restructuring, and maintenance of healthy domestic and continental forex markets can contribute to preventing sovereign insolvency despite the negative effects of this pandemic to African countries.

Financial institutions should focus on the positive opportunities and learning experiences from this pandemic and plan how they will help their member states adjust to the effects of COVID-19 and attain sustainable development thereafter. This step will be in line with the World Bank’s advice on planning for the economic recovery from COVID-19, in the bid for nations to restart their economic engines and build back stronger and better in the short term and longer term.

Corruption takes many shapes in times of crisis, improper procurement decisions is one of them. In corona times, emerging corruption trends in the health care sector are taking advantage of the greater demand for medical goods and the resource deficit. If not addressed properly, the possible consequences of corruption might echo louder than the pandemic itself in the most unequal regions of the globe, such as the Americas and Africa, particularly in countries where corruption networks had already permeated into the health care system.

The African Union Commission estimated that Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) could shrink by up to 4.51 percent, resulting in the loss of 20 million jobs. The looming debt crisis further complicates the pandemic-induced economic shock, severely limiting governments' ability to repay their foreign loans and address the current crisis. From 2010 to 2018, the average public debt in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 40%-59% of GDP, making it the continent with the fastest-growing debt accumulation toward sovereign, private and multilateral lenders.

The suspension of operations as a result of government measures towards curbing Covid-19, should not be encouraged. Competition agencies must remain vigilant in protecting vulnerable consumers with no bargaining power from unscrupulous businesses. Further, while cartel conduct is per se illegal, it is the responsibility of the competition agencies to provide the business community with guidance on how they can operate during the crisis and at the same time comply with competition law.  Covid-19 has also proved to us that, competition agencies need to reinvent their enforcement including the adoption of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and investing in the security and privacy concerns of the people. Integration of technology is no longer a choice.

Aside from price-related breaches of competition law, horizontal coordination measures are now put in place by businesses to provide essential services to consumers in order to keep the economy afloat. Such coordination, which ordinarily raises competition red flags, is now temporarily permitted in some jurisdictions, especially as the economy now runs on a skeletal basis. As the exigencies of the pandemic seem to have upended market practice, one wonders if competition law rules are fit for this perilous time and ponders on the intervention of the Nigerian Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Authority (“The Commission”) in the situation.

The shortcomings of the current legal and policy framework does not mean that responses to COVID19 should be lacking. Instead, there is adequate room for responses as we learn lessons and take notes to do better. The best way to move policy and law is to ensure that it is constantly reviewed to make sure they serve their purpose.

In this post, I will reflect on the logics that have obscured innovation namely, international intellectual property law and formal organization of innovation through ‘national innovation systems’. These two combine under the banner of legal modernization and economic growth, and have collectively undermined innovation that does not fit into their premises.

Under the Model Conventions, each African country has lost taxation rights over cross-border workers who have been evacuated from it but who are still deriving income from it through telework. Telework, a term originally coined by Jack Nilles, is ‘the activity of working from home while communicating with your office by phone or email, or using the internet’. The COVID-19 pandemic has made social distancing an imperative and, consequently, we are witnessing an unprecedented reliance on telework.