
African countries plan a fresh push at international summits this year for standard measures of economic strength such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to have better recognition of their vast natural assets and resources, Reuters said in a report yesterday.
The report said that the initiative is being driven by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in the hope that recalibrating GDP would automatically improve debt metrics and relieve borrowing market pressures that had triggered dozens of economic crises in recent decades.
The report comes as countries like Nigeria are preparing to announce new rebased consumer price index and GDP reports.
There has long been scepticism over how much hard cash precious ecosystems can generate for poorer countries. But the U.N. estimates that Africa, which makes up 20 per cent of the world’s land surface, is home to one-quarter of all mammal species and one-fifth of bird species.
It also has around onesixth of the world’s remaining forests and those, along with mangroves, help lock away planet-damaging carbon emissions – a benefit that should be included in GDP calculations, the AfDB argues.
“It will be on the agenda at every single step, G7, G20 (meetings)… I expect others to recognise that it is time to begin to change the valuation of African economies,” AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference last week in Tanzania.