I rely on watching where people hang out as a barometer of what is happening.

Large numbers of young people lazing about during working hours shouts unemployment to me.

It tells me that countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East where I have observed this have grown up economic problems.

In those oil-rich countries of the Gulf I see men drinking coffee, smoking nargilla  and chatting in the cafes it tells me that their wives are keeping house and cooking the delicious but laborious meals that only oppressed women have the time to prepare.

The other large gatherings in these salubrious lands are outside the offices of the foreign exchange firms.

The people there are workers from Africa and other poor countries paying the premium and completing the tiresome paperwork to send money home to their families.

Remittances to Africa are a massive industry.

They amount to $48 trillion a year, according to the World Bank.

This money from more than ten million Africans working abroad eclipses both aid paid to and foreign direct investment in their countries.

Calling this a lifeline is a rank understatement.

The workers pay dearly to maintain this.

They work without protection from exploitation, social benefits and medical aid.

They pay nearly 9% commission, at least three points higher than counterparts sending money to other parts of the globe.

When the COVID 19 lockdown began this year, the World Bank was predicting a 24% reduction in remittance to Africa.

The prospect of fewer people being permitted to go abroad to earn money to send home was devastating.

The World Bank this week rather pulled its neck in.

Its latest migration and development brief  forecasts that remittances will be 9% lower this year and 6% down in 2021.

Economically painful, without doubt. But Africans, who have proven wrong the apocalyptic expert medical predictions of how damaging the corona virus would be to their countries with the poorest medical facilities on the planet, have confounded the economists too.

We learn from the central bank in Harare that diaspora remittances to Zimbabwe increased by 45 percent to $658 million during the first nine months of 2020.

Zimbabwe joins Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and the DRC.and top remittance earners south of the Sahara.

Remittances from the three million Zimbabweans living abroad are a key source of foreign currency

Last year Zimbabwe earned $635 million in remittances.

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President Cyril Ramaphosa had his work cut out when he took on the chairmanship of the African Union this year.

He is committed to steering the continental body along its final bumpy stretch of road to the ambitious goal of silencing the Guns in 2020.

More importantly, the bean counters argue, he  has to oversee  the final implementation of the African Free Trade Agreement.

Both of these face an existential threat from COVID 19.

Silencing the guns means ending all wars, civil conflict, violence conflict, and gender-based violence on the continent.

Herculean does not being to describe this task.

Since their inception, African conflicts have gobbled up the lion’s share of United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Deploying the blue helmets currently takes up an amount approaching $8 billion a year. That is $1 billion more than the overall budget of the world organisation.

Of the 13 active UN peacekeeping operations around the planet, no fewer than seven – Western Sahara, Darfur, Central African Republic, Abyei, South Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo – are in Africa.

The latter is the largest and most expensive blue helmet operation, taking up 20 000 of the 100 000 UN peacekeepers deployed worldwide.

To put some perspective on this, the number of UN troops deployed in the DRC is half the number of US troops stationed in Germany.

The United States currently picks up 28% of the UN peacekeeping tab which is less than one percent of total US defense spending – about as much as Washington spends in a month on its military operation in Afghanistan.

African leaders have for a time sought to pay more for peacekeeping in their determination to give credibility to the principle of African solutions for African problems. 

The best they can manage is a 25:75 split in costs with  the UN and this has yet to be inked.

As the battle with the COVID 19 pandemic turns the G7 economies on their heads, African countries know that they will feel the cost even  more keenly.

They are having to go to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for money simply to feed their people.

The Bretton Woods institutions are obliged to make their assistance conditional on the recipients adhering to strict austerity policies.

Silencing the Guns and implementing an African Free Trade Agreement are undeniably desirable.

Silencing the Nevertheless AU chairman Cyril Ramaphosa will be hard pressed to convince the lenders that these projects take priority over fiscal discipline and  financing the bare necessities.  

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It expects COVID 19-related unemployment to slash a fifth of this financial economic lifeline crucial to vulnerable communities.

The remittances sent home by Third World citizens working in wealthy countries is three times larger than the  global development aid given by those countries.

The World Bank says COVID 19 economic difficulties has caused a drop of $110 billion in remittances this year.

This  will bring it  down 20 percent to below $450-billion.

For example, remittances from Britain to Africa are down 80%, while remittances from Italy to Africa are down 90%.

This as the United Nations University predicts an increase in global poverty for the first time since 1990.

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The money will come from the fund’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust.

IMFManaging Director Kristalina Georgieva says the debt relief will run for an initial period of six months.

She says it will enable the poor and vulnerable countries to channel financial resources towards dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic.

Advocacy groups have been calling for debt cancellation as relief for African countries hit by coronavirus infections and the drastic economic measures needed to curb its spread.

The World Bank has forecast that COVID 19 will drive Africa into the first recession is has experienced in a quarter of a century.

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At their virtual meeting centre on Addis Abba, the ministers accepted that the immediate priority must be the health and humanitarian aspects of the battle.

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni was one of co-chairs of the second virtual meeting of his African peers on the COVID 19 pandemic.

The call for a $100-billion immediate assistance package grabs the headlines.

The ministers say debt relief from bilateral, multilateral and commercial partners could be coordinated with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union.

Since it will take the world economy between 24 and 36 months to recover from the lockdown to curb the pandemic, the debt relief to Africa should be spread over two to three years.

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Three billion dollars was pledged at the three-day ministerial gathering in Geneva to help people fleeing their countries to escape war and conflict.

The three billion dollars pledged in Geneva  is in addition to the more than two billion dollars  pledged by the World Bank to help re-house refugees and finance 50 000 resettlement centres.

Germany, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees is giving 1,7 billion euros.

The United States under President Donald Trump is a dark cloud over this issue. The limit of 18 000 refugees imposed for 2020 is the lowest  figure in modern American history.

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It’s  an indication , perhaps, that when it comes to saving the we’re all in the same boat.

French President Emmanuel Macron has issued a stern warning that the the rise in global temperatures is a permanent emergency.

“We are using the battle against global warming,” he says. “Leader can no longer say they didn’t;t know. We are learning about this every day.

The World Bank says it will stop funding oil and gas explorations in 2019.

Business leaders are making new commitments on using renewable energy.

Macron has taken up the cudgels to make these meaningful despite the fact that President Donald Trump is pulling the United States out of the historic Paris accord.

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