While the United States and other rich countries in the Global North start to administer COVID-19 vaccination boosters, only 8.5% of African adults have received one dose of vaccine. Immediate and sustained action is needed both to close the vaccination gap and to reverse a dangerous global health-care divergence.
JOHANNESBURG/LONDON – For the past 30 years, everyone assumed that developed and developing economies were converging, with higher growth rates in Africa and elsewhere helping those countries to catch up. But African economies are now growing at only half the average global rate. Divergence is becoming the new order of the day. And with growing fiscal pressures, increasing debt, mounting inflation, rising interest rates, and supply-chain disruptions creating new barriers to growth, it is almost certain to get worse in 2022.
JOHANNESBURG/LONDON – For the past 30 years, everyone assumed that developed and developing economies were converging, with higher growth rates in Africa and elsewhere helping those countries to catch up. But African economies are now growing at only half the average global rate. Divergence is becoming the new order of the day. And with growing fiscal pressures, increasing debt, mounting inflation, rising interest rates, and supply-chain disruptions creating new barriers to growth, it is almost certain to get worse in 2022.