BAKU (Azerbaijan), March 3 (NNN-KBC) — Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi has applauded the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member countries under the leadership of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev for spearheading a rigorous campaign for access of vaccines during the tough COVID-19 pandemic period.
Speaking at the summit-level meeting in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, on Thursday, while presenting Kenya’s status update on measures being undertaken by government to cushion its citizens from the negative economic effects of the Pandemic, Mudavadi said the NAM Contact Group on COVID-19 did a tremendous job in lobbying for not just availability, but more access to vaccines.
“If there is a global lesson learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the unequal access to vaccines across the world. Kenya therefore, supports the COVAX initiative, but also calls for access diversification through equitable spread of vaccine manufacturing, diagnostics and treatments for other potential pandemics,” said Mudavadi.
He said the COVAX initiative campaign guaranteed rapid, fair and equitable access to vaccines by people and countries regardless of their wealth. The Prime Cabinet Secretary who represented President William Ruto at the Baku Summit, further pointed out that the campaign was a gesture towards not only promoting equity but enhancing world peace and cooperation.
“Like other NAM countries, Kenya is continuously looking at meaningful multilateral partnerships beyond mitigating COVID-19. Kenya is open to concrete partnership in improving transport infrastructure, education, liquidity to business including MSMEs, health provision, agriculture & food security, support to tourism recovery; improving environment, water & sanitation; supporting manufacturing and enhancing social protection,” the Prime CS told the Summit.
With the COVID-19 pandemic having significantly affected many economies world-wide, Mudavadi further told the summit that Kenya supports NAM on the need for the international community to boost debt-relief and restructuring to help African countries mitigate the effect of COVID-19. He said such support should be through investments and the implementation of practical climate-change adaptation programs.
Kenya’s present public debt is at 60% of GDP of which the domestic debt is 33.2% of GDP while external debt is 27% of GDP. This is a public debt total of $35.4 billion or 31% of GDP.
“Kenya supports the NAM in formulating a strategy to promote the common interests of its Member States on post-pandemic recovery particularly establishing a UN High Level Panel on Post-COVID Global Recovery,” said Mudavadi urging the NAM members to “be your brothers’ keeper” in efforts to re-engineer the dwindling fortunes in the economies, adding that Kenya has embarked on stimulating a stagnant economy through the Economic Recovery Agenda for economic turnaround and inclusive growth.
Mudavadi however also told the Summit that Kenya is yet to recover fully from the impacts of COVID-19 on the economy, despite various interventions that have been undertaken by government to try and support its citizen to get back to their feet.
“Livelihoods and businesses are still struggling after COVID-19 disruption of both internal and international markets for goods and services. Unemployment is high, as scarcity of food resulting from high prices threaten the health of majority Kenyans. Of the 57 million Kenyans, 17% or 8.9 million are were experiencing extreme poverty in 2022 exacerbated in part by COVID-19.” Mudavadi said
Overall, the education sector was also severely hit by the pandemic. Despite mitigation measures to cushion learners still bearing the brunt of the pandemic, UNESCO data shows that close to a half of the world’s students are still in one way or another affected by COVID-19 effects. In Kenya the pandemic led to closure of schools for almost a year, thus affecting the country’s education transition systems.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 120 countries usually considered developing or the Third World, and represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’ members and hold 55% of the world population.
