AT FIRST GLANCE, sub-Saharan Africa appears to have avoided the worst of the pandemic. It has 14% of the world's population but, even as it is drenched by a second wave, just 3% of known cases and deaths. In 2020 its economy shrank by less than the global average, estimates the IMF. Eleven of the 24 countries that grew at all last year were in the region. But try telling the finance minister of one of those, Ghana, that African countries have had it easy. Ken Ofori-Atta worries that Africa is "going to lose a decade", if nothing is done to respond to the pandemic's economic shock. He admits to a vertiginous feeling: "It's like sailing down Niagara Falls in an African canoe."
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