Opinion

With higher mortality rates for women and children, lack of access to infrastructure and medication, and the high cost of medication, Africa needs smart interventions to overcome the barriers to healthcare access and adoption.

A series of impact studies showed that microfinance had mixed results. Charging affordable interest rates and offering training as well as loans simply wasn’t profitable – and profitable microfinance did not have the full effect of economic gains that was intended. A course correction was needed.  

What protesters consider as the Rajapaksa government’s failures have been symptoms, rather than causes, of the structural weaknesses threatening to tear apart the economy.

In the past, dependency thoughts broke some political boundaries and explained the reasons why wealthy nations were taking advantage of poor countries, and today they are useful in explaining recurring financial crises, the reckless use of natural resources and widening inequalities both in the global South and the North.

It is also important that Nepal's central as well as provincial governments extend support, both financial and moral, to pandemic-affected Nepali citizens, especially to the foreign returnees, to capitalize on their skills and expertise which they have gained from overseas employment.

Notwithstanding all measures put in place, and considering the alarming rate of infection of the coronavirus, the inevitable eventually happened. On 12 March 2020, Ghana Health Service under the Ministry of Health confirmed the first two COVID-19 cases in the country. The cases have since been rising daily with the COVID-19 story yet to end. To this point, Ghana has recorded 46,222 cases of COVID-19 cases with 45,417 recoveries and 299 deaths.

If the government takes serious actions to promote local and community entrepreneurship, this will not only diversify and uplift Nepal’s overall economy, but also provide enormous employment opportunities to Nepal’s jobless youths who have very few options for employment at the moment–apart from lying up in manpower agencies and heading for ill-paid foreign employment in the Gulf countries.

In Nigeria, data shows that a large number of individuals, particularly in Northern Nigeria choose to join Boko Haram due to poverty, lack of education, unemployment, the willingness to learn more about Islam, and the knowledge that Nigeria tolerates impunity.

The goal of the buddy system is not the artificial redistribution of wealth from the wealthier to the poorer countries. The goal is to facilitate interaction and exchange between the buddy countries on different levels, from administration to citizen initiatives.

The policy brings major changes in the areas of early childhood care and education wherein the pre-schooling years are in focus now.