Aid and Development Archive

Most African countries have fared relatively well in their responses to the coronavirus pandemic, reporting rates of infection and mortality that are far below those seen across much of Europe and the Americas. Yet Africa is expected to take a huge economic hit from the pandemic and its associated containment measures, with the African Development Bank forecasting that an additional 50 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty across the continent. Vaccination drives and economic relief packages will certainly be important to contain the damage. But according to author and researcher Efosa Ojomo, emerging-market nations should be aiming to […]

Ecuador’s presidential election was supposed to be a competition between a leftist candidate in the mold of exiled former President Rafael Correa, and a traditional, center-right and pro-market alternative. But when the votes were counted after Sunday’s first round, voters had delivered a surprise. Ecuadorians could end up with a choice between two leftists, potentially signaling that the coronavirus pandemic has opened the door to a new “pink tide” in South America. The final outcome of the vote has not been decided and won’t be until the runoff on April 11. The only certainty is that no candidate earned enough […]

The nightmarish scenes last spring from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city and economic capital, exposed what has arguably been the Western Hemisphere’s worst COVID-19 outbreak. Many of the Pacific port city’s affluent residents had been visiting Europe during a school break last January and February; a few weeks later, its hospitals and morgues were quickly overwhelmed. Dantean images of the dead abandoned on sidewalks by grieving family members, who feared they would also lose their lives to this alien new disease, flashed around the world. But things had already been rough in the small Andean nation before those horrors. In October […]