Am not sure how the government feels about Moody’s ratings, but with every rating coming out they seem like they have no idea what they are doing. They are being downgraded and they have no answers to all these downgrades. Same as South Africa that has junk status right now.

The approaches they have taken with their fiscal policies are not fixing anything, on the contrary, they are making it worse. Its time they find a new approach, that involves all relevant stakeholders.
Our financial institutions are proving to be quite inefficient when it comes to dealing with money. If I didn’t know better, it seems like they really don’t care about the local economy or maybe they just don’t have a clue what is happening in other markets.

Worse than the financial institutions, is the government, especially those in the finance ministry. They seem to be playing defence and catch up with other governments. From their recent records, they are not enthusiastic about the local markets. Except for the timber market, they recently did a great job there.

African governments, in general, have mostly been reactive to events instead of being proactive, as rich as the continent is, we are failing to make any worthwhile impacts on the world stage, yet we seem to be producing enough of what is dominating the world economy, it isn’t right and anyone that cares enough can see it. 

We indeed have our challenges and difficulties, but those who are chosen to address them are more interested in everything else but solving them, one can almost say that our leaders are incompetent when it comes to playing on the world stage. They rather loot from their own homes and enrich their already wealthy friends and associates, instead of their countries and economies. The International Monterey Fund (IMF) forecasts a growth in the region of three to four per cent globally, but for most African countries, especially in the south, either the economies are shrinking or barley just hitting the two per cent mark. It’s no wonder investors are itchy about investing in our region.

However, with the impact that Covid-19 pandemic has had throughout the world, I doubt there is anything worth smiling about they can tell us now.

We can’t blame Moody and other rating agencies for doing their work, they are calling it as it is and if we are not happy about it, we should do something about it, maybe even something we haven’t done before, because clearly whatever we are doing currently is not producing the desired outcome. If I was in their position, I would feel ashamed when such ratings are given to my country.

* Olavi Popyeinawa
Email: olavipopyeinawa@gmail.com
Twitter: @olavipopyeinawa