United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc Chairman, Tony Elumelu bared his mind on Covid-19 at a high-level Roundtable discussion made up of African leaders including Dr. Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala, the Special Envoy of the African Union on Covid-19 and Tidjane Thiam.

During the session titled ‘Resilient World: An African call for a new world order,’ Elumelu said;

“I see this pandemic as an opportunity to reset Africa. Africa as a continent has all it takes to emerge into a strong digital economy.”

“I feel that as we engage the rest of the world in providing relief, we need to look for a more fundamental solution to Africa’s challenges. I have often argued for martial plan overtime.”

“We need to mobilise everyone. If we have a martial plan that mobilises resources to address particular issues, then we can mitigate against this constant begging for assistance.”

“The truth is that we have resources to help mobilise people. As the founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, we committed to endow $100m to support young African entrepreneurs and we have been seeing the positive results this has yielded so far.”

“It is evident that if we can fix access to electricity, ensure the stability of the macro-economic environment, ensure prioritisation of the youth, empower our small and medium scale enterprises and fix youth migration, then we are in for a better and more resilient economy’.”

“There is an urgent need to prioritise our youths and empower our SMEs. The people who work hard need to be encouraged.”