The Speaker of the People’s National Assembly, Brahim Boughali, called today, Tuesday from Abuja (Nigeria), for supporting and expanding the African Union’s Fund to Fight the Covid-19 Pandemic, to serve as “monitoring tool that enables African countries to move from prevention to proactive response,” according to a statement issued by the Assembly.
In his speech during a panel discussion on “Financing the African Response to the Pandemic: Legislative Necessities and Response,” Mr. Boughali stressed the need to “prepare the health system in the African continent to deal with such pandemics through a strategy that prioritizes health expenditures, local vaccine production, and the adoption of digitization in the health field. He indicated that ” The African Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the African Medicines Agency, which “Algeria hopes to host its headquarters, will play a pivotal role in this regard.”
On the occasion, Mr. Boughali highlighted the “aspiration of African countries to have the continent’s infrastructure for health care through the financing of the African Bank.”
He also evoked all the proposed initiatives which mainly consist of an “intensive investment in the health sector, incentive laws to enable health personnel to work in the best conditions, emergency funds to confront exceptional cases of pandemics, as well as fiscal laws that reduce fees and owed debts and stimulate investment.”
The Speaker of the lower house of parliament stressed the need to use “modern technologies and artificial intelligence in conducting trade exchanges, especially in the event of renewed quarantine and border closures,” calling on the occasion to “attach these exchanges to tax policies and laws that include tax declarations and customs duties, especially those related to strategic articles in combating pandemics and food security and reduce the burden on the production mechanism.”
In this context, Mr. Boughali considered that “the development of intra-African trade and the diversification of income sources as well as support and expansion of local manufacturing of all required commodities and the mobilization of basic and financial resources is an absolute necessity.
