Abstract
The uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought demonstrates that income redistribution and traditional debt relief mechanisms are insufficient to meet public spending needs, mitigate external debt, and comply with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to reduce multilateral debt to sustainable levels. Also, West African countries have focused their attention on the long-term fight against poverty and inequality and strengthening their social programs, especially in primary health care and macroeconomic stability. However, for more than a decade, the developing and least developed countries of West Africa have faced rapidly weakening macroeconomic conditions, combining several interrelated crises such as the sharp decline in oil prices, volatile financial markets and tourism disruptions, a global recession, the crisis of climate change, and shortages of food and energy, along with the economic contraction of COVID-19. Data from these countries show that health spending increases economic growth, minimizes infant mortality rates, and reduces debt. Furthermore, increasing government spending efficiency reduces the total debt and improves the health sector, in particular.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Fiscal Space Policies for Sustainable Development and Debt Relief: Empirical Analysis in West African Countries
- Prospects for Import Substitution and Balancing Ukraine’s External Trade
- United States Foreign Aid and Multilateralism Under the Trump Presidency
- Commentary
- The New Global Direction: From “One Globalization” to “Two Globalizations”? Russia’s War in Ukraine in Global Perspective
- Review Essay
- John Darwin: Unlocking the World: Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830–1930 and Christina Reimann and Martin Öhman: Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World: Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570–1940
- Book Reviews
- Kareem Rabie: Palestine is Throwing a Party and the Whole World is Invited: Capital and State Building in the West Bank
- John E. Marthinsen: Demystifying Global Macroeconomics
- Shruti Kapila: Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Fiscal Space Policies for Sustainable Development and Debt Relief: Empirical Analysis in West African Countries
- Prospects for Import Substitution and Balancing Ukraine’s External Trade
- United States Foreign Aid and Multilateralism Under the Trump Presidency
- Commentary
- The New Global Direction: From “One Globalization” to “Two Globalizations”? Russia’s War in Ukraine in Global Perspective
- Review Essay
- John Darwin: Unlocking the World: Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830–1930 and Christina Reimann and Martin Öhman: Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World: Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570–1940
- Book Reviews
- Kareem Rabie: Palestine is Throwing a Party and the Whole World is Invited: Capital and State Building in the West Bank
- John E. Marthinsen: Demystifying Global Macroeconomics
- Shruti Kapila: Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age