African economies are fragile. It could be even worse than the health consequences, unfortunately. Much of our revenue is dependent on the export of raw materials. That sector has been hit badly.

The oil-producing countries have been hit very badly. We expect a recession in Africa for the first time in 25 years or so. Debt now is also a big problem. Africa is expected to pay $44 billion (€39 billion) in interest on existing loans, which are about $400 billion or so. The money is not there, obviously... 

Agriculture in Africa has been very badly hit by the locust phenomena. Which state is going to catch up, especially in eastern Africa? So, we are really worried about famine and food security in Africa...

There are so many valuable lessons we should really draw out of this. To start with, we need to have resilient health care systems in our countries where it is underfunded, underresourced, understaffed. We are not paying enough attention to that. Only 10 countries out of 54 countries have free universal health care systems. That's one sector really to pay attention to.

The second lesson we learned is this overdependence on minerals, oil and the export of raw materials is not really the way forward. A half percent of Africans work in that sector — it is not providing employment for our people.

Seventy percent of our crude oil is exported. It's a joke — we are not even processing our own raw materials. We need to get over this and pay attention to other sectors of the economy to build resilience. You can't just depend on one product and leave off oil or diamonds or cobalt.