Africa must leverage investment to unleash the potential and the ingenuity of its most important asset, the youth.
President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, said this at the Montreal fireside chat recently.
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The three-day virtual event was organised by the international economic forum of the Americas, under the theme, “a sustainable recovery for people and the planet.”
He said that the pandemic had worsened inequality in many spheres, education, rural versus urban, and the differences between the genders in terms of access to education and to finance.
Adesina said, “The risk of actually dying from hunger is higher than the risk of dying from Covid-19.”
He noted the bank’s commitment to mobilise $25 billion for climate finance by 2025 as well as a number of bank initiatives that are addressing climate adaptation, such as TAAT, which has provided Sudanese farmers access to heat-tolerant maize and farmers in Zimbabwe, Malawi and other southern African countries.
The Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Inger Andersen, said “Climate change is an existential crisis,” and one that the planet must face together.
