Tobacco use kills primary and secondary smokers. While 7 million primary smokers die annually from tobacco use, more than 1.2 million non-smokers also die annually from being exposed to second-hand smoke[1]. Tobacco contains many cancer-causing toxins that harm every organ of the body. Smoking tobacco introduces nicotine and other chemicals, including numerous carcinogens, into the lungs, blood and organs, which causes coronary and non-coronary heart diseases; cerebrovascular disease; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); pneumonia and cancers[2]. 

Most diseases caused by tobacco smoking cannot be managed by smokers alone. They require treatment by specialized healthcare providers such as a cardiologist, lung specialist, an oncologist and an informal caregiver. Social support from patients’ informal caregivers is indispensable during and after treatment.

The informal caregiver is defined as a care provider that bears the burden of assisting the patient with physical, psychological and emotional support from the time of diagnosis, during the treatment period, and after treatment[3]. While caregiving may impact positively on the patient, it could also impact negatively on the caregiver who endures the physical, psychological, and emotional costs of care. The caregiver burden may lead to anxiety, depression and impaired quality of life. Although evidence on the health and economic burden of primary smokers has been widely documented, only a few attempts have evaluated the ‘caregiver burden’. In the present study, we assessed the types of burden perceived by informal caregivers and the factors associated with the caregiving burden.

Over the years, the Nigerian government has deployed development financing initiatives to boost food production through increased access to finance for farmers and other small businesses in the sector. While progress may have been made in some areas, the country is still at a critical juncture, as access to food and its affordability remain a major problem for a large part of the population. This brief aims to examine how the government’s financing policies to improve food production have fared, given the prevailing economic conditions in the country. The focus is particularly on such financing programmes as administered by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It will highlight progress with these financing programmes and discuss other challenges to food production, which are possible drivers of the rising food inflation in the country.

The debt situation in many low-income countries (LICs) following the COVID-19 pandemic has deteriorated considerably. While many LICs had participated in the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) by April 2022, only three countries have taken part in the Common Framework for Debt Treatment beyond DSSI. To better operationalise the Common Framework, the G20 should incentivise private and public creditor participation including those of Non-Paris Club members. In addition, G20 members should encourage the application of the comparability of treatment clause and urge multilateral creditors to participate in the debt restructuring process. The G20 should encourage full disclosure of debt among creditors by promoting the OECD Debt Transparency Initiative and by adopting the G20 Operational Guidelines. Moreover, the G20 should support local capacity building for public financial management in LICs and should promote that debt treatment under the Common Framework is subject to scaling up sustainable investments in debtor countries. Finally, the G20 should use its weight in the managing boards of the international financial institutions to push IMF-WB debt sustainability analyses to better include sustainability criteria.

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The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the global economy. The sources of economic growth and productivity gains have been constrained, and poverty and inequality have risen sharply. In addition, fiscal space has been severely educed and public debt levels have risen at an unprecedented speed. To accelerate the recovery from COVID-19 and make it more sustainable, it is urgent to reconsider debt-restructuring strategies.

This policy brief describes the pitfalls in current approaches to debt restructuring for assessing sustainability in low and lower-middle income countries, proposes a reframing of debt sustainability analysis to take into account social and environmental sustainability and provides concrete examples of initiatives based on the experiences and challenges of the developing world.

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Data governance frameworks, structures and implementation approaches are all institutionally driven. Building an African data economy that benefits citizens and businesses requires the existence of responsible, sustainable and robust data governance institutions. From institutions that create or make relevant national and international data governance laws, regulations, standards and policies, institutions that monitor compliance and enforcement to available laws and regulations, institutions that generate evidence-based research to inform and maintain data governance mechanisms, institutions that apply data governance frameworks to their data processing pipelines to institutions that facilitate findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data principles, data governance institutions define and shape data ecosystems. In Africa, there is a dearth of literature on these data governance institutions. This is mainly because robust data governance ecosystems are lacking.

This article was Written by Damian O. Eke