In this issue:

AUDA-NEPAD Launches Its COVID-19 Response Plan
A-NEPAD is in the process of launching its COVID-19 Response Plan of Action. It is a comprehensive, coherent and multidimensional plan aimed at mobilising the necessary human capacity and expertise of the Institution, under the leadership of Dr. Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, Chief Executive Officer.

The AUDA-NEPAD COVID-19 Response Plan of Action is a proactive, efficient and a direct response in enhancing continental coverage and improving access to sustainable and resilient health services, while ensuring the protection of Africa’s economic foundations. READ MORE>

A united Africa against the pandemic
Never before has the African Union borne its name so well. The pandemic continues its course, with new cases every day and our continent, hitherto spared, is seeing a surge in the number of infected people. It is no longer a question of whether we are ready to fight it, but rather of taking it on together, this virus that knows no borders or ethnicity. READ MORE>

African Union Smart Safety Surveillance (AU-3S) and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
The safety of vaccines, medicines, medical devices, and other medical products are monitored and managed to ensure their safety. The detection, assessment, understanding, and prevention of adverse effects or any other medicine-related effect are to ensure that the medical products and other health technologies are safe throughout the product life cycle. It is an essential public health activity designed to ensure that interventions, including medical products and other health technologies, retain a favourable benefit-risk profile throughout their entire life cycle. READ MORE>

AUDA-NEPAD on Environmental Sustainability 
The Environmental Sustainability Division’s primary objective is to accelerate implementation of transformative projects towards sustainable and resilient pathways to development and coordinate interaction between natural, economic and social systems, and integrate the concept of environmental sustainability in the development cycle. The division has four priority programs (Agriculture, Food Security, Environment and Renewable Energy) and the work is centred around key developmental challenges facing the continent such as: climate change land water food and energy. READ MORE>

Globalisation linkage to COVID-19: How Africa’s Economy is Impacted?
Since the rise of globalisation, the world has now become like a small neighbourhood where people can easily interact with each other without facing any serious barriers. This has become both beneficial and detrimental to the social, political and economic sphere as far as the welfare of the people is concerned. Meaning despite the free movement of people, goods, and services led by globalisation being the stimulus to social-economic development, it has also become a source of spreading diseases. As a result, due to the technological development factor of globalisation, an outbreak such as COVID-19 has turned into a major pandemic disease that affected over million people around the world regardless of their geographical location differences. This is simply because technological advancement which is one of the main forces for globalisation made it easier for people to travel by land, sea and even air from one part to the other without facing any obstacles. In that case, if these people have contacted the disease such as COVID-19 in the city or country (A), they can easily transmit it to the city or country (B) which had no infections if proper healthcare measures are not in place to prevent the spread to the general public. READ MORE>

AUDA-NEPAD in the News
On 8th April, Dr Ibrahim Mayaki spoke on the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD’s Response Plan to COVID-19 on CNBC Africa. WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE 

Mrs Estherine Fotabong was interviewed by Peter Ndoro on SABC News on the AUDA-NEPAD’s Response Plan to COVID-19. WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE 

In an interview conducted in French, Mr Amine Adoum spoke to DW on Africa mobilising against the coronavirus. THE ARTICLE CAN BE READ HERE 

You may also listen to the podcast on ‘Galvanising African industrial capacity towards critical pharmaceutical and medical supplies,’ following Dr Janet Byaruhanga’s radio interview with SABC Channel Africa. THE PODCAST IS AVAILABLE HERE