GLOBALIZATION AND POVERTY DURING CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC

                 Charity group Oxfam have warned that a recession caused by Coronavirus could push an extra half billion people into poverty unless urgent action is taken, conducted by King's College London and the Australian National University, the research gauged the short-term impact of containing the Coronavirus on global monetary poverty based on the World Bank poverty lines from 1.90 $ to 5.50 $ a day, global poverty levels would increase under all three scenarios for the first time since 1990 according to the analysis with up to a decade of progress lost globally, the impact is set to be even worse in some hard hit parts of the world such as North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East where up to 30 years of progress could be wiped out. The most serious scenario involves a 20% fall in income which would result in an additional 548 million people earning less than the World Bank poverty threshold of 5.50$ per day, the United Nations has warned that 2.5$ trillion is needed to support developing countries during the crisis and that nearly half of all Africa's jobs could be lost, G20 ministers, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund IMF are set to meet to discuss debt relief for poorer countries next week, Oxfam has urged them to agree to a global rescue package and mobilize the sum cited by the UN to avert a global economic collapse.
Possible measures to raise the money could include the immediate cancellation of 1$ trillion in debt, the IMF issuing a further this sum of money in Special Drawing Rights, an increase in aid flows to struggling countries as well as the adoption of emergency solidarity taxes.

An analytical paper published by the Policy Center for the New South stated that Africa will feel a big impact of the novel Coronavirus in light of almost complete lack of savings that can be resorted to, because its population suffers from extreme poverty more than any other region in the world, researchers who prepared that analytical paper and they are from Africa and Europe mentioned that it's important to draw the attention of the whole world to the impact of Coronavirus epidemic on Africa, because this crisis represents the meeting point between globalization and global poverty, it must become an opportunity for international cooperation. This event witnessed the participation of: Younes Adito who represents the Institute for peace and Security Studies in Ethiopia, Karim El Aynaoui who represents The Policy Center for the New South in Morocco, Thomas Goumar of the Institute for International Relations from France, Paolo Magri from the Institute of International Political Studies Italy, Greg Mills on behalf of the Print Hurst Foundation from South Africa, Karen Von Hebel on the Royal Institute for United Services for Defense and Security Studies in London and the Bruegel Research Center in Brussels represented by Gottram Wolf. The control of emerging Coronavirus is closely related to the availability of resources and the depth of governance systems, therefor world leaders should focus on its impact on the most vulnerable groups especially in Africa, in December just three months ago, when the Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization office in Beijing of a possible outbreak of a pandemic, within 100 days, 3 billion people around the world were forced to go into their homes, which is a radical approach to facing a related emergency Public Health, all nations are threatened and struggling to avoid falling into the abyss, therefor it's more necessary than ever to think comprehensively and intensify efforts locally to protect the most vulnerable societies in the world, not only threatened by the Covid-19 but also a political, economic and social repercussions that follow, because global pandemics are costly and tackling them requires enormous potential especially for poor countries, for example, it's estimated that the HIV pandemic has depleted between 2% and 4% of the Gross Domestic Product GDP growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The World Health Organization estimates that Ebola epidemic between 2014 and 2016, cost nearly 12% of the combined GDP of the three most affected countries which are Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but what was previously mentioned according to the paper, is not compare with the depth and breadth of the impact of Coronavirus, over the past two weeks, the stock market crash caused by the outbreak of the virus has led to a loss of 9$ trillion in values and the cost of lower global GDP growth may reach an estimated additional two trillion as the upcoming closings in major economies illustrate more disastrous effects, so it seems that there is no deviation from a severe global recession.

Africa in particular will feel the impact hardly of this pandemic, where the population suffers from more extreme poverty than any other region in the world, because Africa harbors most of the world's poor populations, although the rate of population living below the poverty line in the World decreased from 36% in 1990 to 10% after 25 years, it's a drop of more than a billion people, slowed growth in Africa and the high population have increase the number of people living below the poverty line from 278 million in 1990 to 413 million in 2015. The poverty rate in Sub-Saharan Africa has exceeded 40% however the continent includes 27 of the 28 poorest countries in the world. The analysis confirmed that the convergence of weak infrastructure systems, weak institutions and governments is a dangerous combination in normal times, where it leads to the spread of informal employment or disguised unemployment and irregularity or low income, the International Labor Organization estimates that 74% of Africans hold FRAGILE jobs, which means they suffer from unemployment or disguised unemployment compared to the global situation of 45% although this is in a continent where national social welfare systems are almost nonexistent because the average per person income in Sub-Saharan Africa is 1585 $ which is only 14% of the global average. Experts say: Currently in an extremely stressful circumstantial setting, this combination of low incomes and limited resources may be a fatal blow, moreover African countries and policies are under additional pressure from falling oil prices, poor food security and disrupting trade and global value chains, which particularly affects African economies which is growing rapidly and seeks integration, in addition to the sudden cessation of tourism flows, foreign direct investment and the difficult conditions that financial markets know.
The analytical paper called on countries of the world to think of ways in which external actors can provide assistance to the less fortunate in Africa by implementing best practices with regard to international cooperation, including the need to activate emergency scientific centers and use technology to track the spread of the Covid-19 in real time, developing ways to slow its spread and reducing it especially the most vulnerable, it was also stressed the need to work strengthen reserve capacity in health care systems, in addition to mitigating the economic and social impacts of the Coronavirus epidemic.