AfDB approves $288.5million to support Nigeria’s COVID-19 fight

Saturday, June 06, 2020 at 10:47 PM by Jerrywright Ukwu

- Nigeria has gotten another loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB)

- The AfDB as approved a $288.5million loan to help Nigeria tackle the COVID-19 pandemic

- The loan is expected to bolster the federal government’s plans to improve surveillance and response to COVID-19

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The board of directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a $288.5million loan to help Nigeria tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate its impact on people and businesses.

The loan is expected to bolster the federal government’s plans to improve surveillance and response to COVID-19 emergencies, ease the impact on workers and businesses and strengthen the social protection system.

According to a statement from the AfDB on Saturday, June 6, Nigeria will also be supported to curtail oil price shocks.

AfDB approves $288.5million to support Nigeria’s COVID-19 fight — President Buhari's government gets another support from Dr Adesina-led AfDB. Photo credit: Presidency
Source: UGC

Ebrima Faal, senior director for the AfDB in Nigeria, said: “The bank will also support Nigeria to address economic shocks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and oil price shocks by focusing our interventions in sectors that will strengthen public health infrastructure and accelerate efforts towards economic transformation and diversification of export earnings and fiscal revenues from oil.”

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The AfDB says it will also be supporting infrastructure development and promoting social inclusion through agribusiness and skills development as key priority areas for Nigeria.

It said the priorities have been selected to leverage Nigeria’s rich endowment of natural and human resources toward transforming the lives of its people.

The bank is also expected to deploy a combination of sovereign and non-sovereign financing instruments to support the two priority areas, including investment and institutional support projects.

The AfDB had provided similar loans to low-income ECOWAS nations – Gambia, Mali and Niger.

Last month, the AfDB approved a loan of 88 million euros to Senegal in support of the costs of its national COVID-19 economic and social resilience programme.

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Meanwhile, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has released a report on its assessment of the Buhari's administration’s handling of the Nigerian economy in the last five years.