Vera Songwe has resigned from her position as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). She announced her resignation during a virtual town meeting for ECA employees and partners on Monday, August 22, according to African Business. In a guest column on AllAfrica, she reflected on her team’s accomplishments to push for economic and social development across the continent during her five-year tenure at the continent’s premier economic think tank. They range from advancements in regional integration and promotion of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area to offsetting the negative impact across the continent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war and climate change. In regard to the pandemic that has greatly hit Africa due to inequality in acquiring vaccines, the economic commission worked with the African Union and President Paul Kagame to advocate and establish the African Medicines Association. It aims at sourcing, producing, and trading much-needed pharmaceutical products. In June, the construction of an mRNA-based vaccine manufacturing facility was launched in Kigali. The same will be built in Senegal and South Africa. The ECA team also proposed a protocol adopted by the African heads of state and government which requires that 30 percent of all procurements by global health agencies are sourced from Africa, she noted. “This is a crucial take-off condition if vaccines and other health products are to be sustainably manufactured on the continent. Lessons from this experience are being used to address the food and fertilizer crisis. During the conference for African finance ministers in June, ECA and its partners lobbied for $33.7bn from International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights as well as a G20-endorsed liquidity plan --the debt service suspension initiative which delivered an additional $13bn liquidity for Africa. Although the next move of the Cameroonian economist is not yet known, an announcement is expected in September.
