For the economist Kako Nubukpo, former Minister of Foresight of Togo, another path of development is possible in Africa, where the pandemic has favored the rise of short circuits.

Why does the virus seem less harmful in Africa?

Kako Nubukpo: First, there is the youth of the population, whose median age is 19 years old. 40% of the population is under 15 years old. Then, Africa was prepared by all the previous pandemics, in 2014 we were already using hydroalcoholic gel because of Ebola!

The memory of these pandemics meant that, very quickly, in all African markets, people started making masks. The resourcefulness economy creates greater ease of adaptability.

Finally, the African continent is much more closed than the rest of the world. There is one flight a day from France, England, China. We, the globalized urban elites, we travel a lot but we represent nothing compared to the population.

But there are also fewer deaths because there are fewer obese people. Unlike the poor in America who eat fat, people here have nothing to eat! For once, as the Swiss essayist Jean Ziegler said, it is the victory of the vanquished.

What lesson do you draw from this crisis?

In Togo, from March, there were cash transfers to households, via mobile phones, around 30,000 CFA (50 euros). Other countries have taken similar initiatives.

More generally, African public policies need to be given back room for maneuver by stronger action on the currency, because the monetarist policies that we are following are not suited to the current situation. The rest of the world has become Keynesian, with all the unconventional monetary policies (“Quantitative Easing”), so there is no reason for African central banks to be the last to do so!

Regaining margins means both negotiating the moratorium on debt, but also broadening the productive base, because all taxation is based on a minority, the emerging middle class, so we need to move upmarket in terms of the transformation of raw materials.

Short circuits must also be developed. The countries that were able to cope quickly with the pandemic are those that have developed peri-urban agriculture, because supplies could only be made gradually due to confinement. This is true for all West African countries - Togo, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire - because the major supply chains have been destabilized, and in the supermarkets there have been shortages of milk, chicken, meat, everything that was imported. One of the merits of the crisis will thus have been to reinforce self-sufficiency.

If the world has become Keynesian, won't the IMF also change its approach?

The crisis reveals the blind spots of African development. For 40 years, all these decades of structural adjustment, emphasis has been placed on macro-economic balance, under the injunction of the IMF and the World Bank, but sectoral development has been neglected, in particular the health and infrastructure. But if you have artificial respirators and no electricity, they can't work!

The IMF will insist on debt sustainability because it is in its DNA. As long as Africa depends on the rest of the world for its supply of goods and services, the IMF will continue to monitor the balance of payments. Africa is the next frontier of global growth.

This crisis is accelerating awareness of the imperative to produce for African consumption and this is the challenge of the African continental free trade area (planned at the level of the African Union). The future of Africa is its internal market, a potential of 2 billion people in 2050.