A report jointly released in May by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies showed that Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg grew their combined fortunes by nearly $60 billion in the past two months. When added with the $25.3 billion earned by Steve Ballmer who led Microsoft as CEO from 2000 to 2014, the combined net worth of the three executives within these two months comes to $72.6 billion.

COVID-19: CBN, Others Aid Kogi With Medical Equipment

By percentage points, Zuckerberg has had the best two months of all the top ten billionaires in the United States with a 46.2 percent rise in his fortune – a net worth rise to $79 billion in May from $54 billion in March. Bezos, who remains the richest person in the world with $147 billion net worth, saw his wealth grow by 30.6 percent in the two months.

Other tech executives who got richer during the period include Mackenzie Bezos of Amazon ($12 billion); Larry Page of Oracle ($11.19 billion); Sergey Brin of Google ($10.7 billion); and Bill Gates of Microsoft ($8 billion).

Beyond tech executives, the total net worth of the over 600 billionaires in the US grew from $2.948 trillion to $3.382 trillion. In March, there were 614 billionaires on the Forbes list. Within the two months under review, the number of billionaires has risen to 630. In the same period, the number of US citizens filing for unemployment rose to 38.6 million according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics.

While the growth underscores growing inequalities, African countries would likely be the next playfield for the companies of these tech billionaires seeking growth as fear of market saturation continues to grow. Africa leads the world in fastest mobile uptake with three-quarters of the population having a SIM card as of 2017, according to GSMA report, but poor mobile and internet infrastructure undermine the growth in demand. As of December 2019, internet penetration on the continent was at 39.3 percent less than the world average of 59 percent.

Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon have since 2020 ramped up their investments on the continent. In May Facebook announced 2Africa, a 37,000km subsea cable that would interconnect 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

“The Investment in 2Africa builds on other investments we have made in the region, including infrastructure investments in South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” said Najam Ahmad, VP of Engineering, Facebook; and Kevin Salvadori, Director Network Investments, Facebook. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of connectivity as billions of people around the world rely on the internet to work, attend school, and stay connected to those they care about. 2Africa will be not only an important element for advancing connectivity infrastructure across the Africa continent but also a major investment that comes at a crucial time for economic recovery.”

Microsoft appears to have strategically positioned itself to benefit from growth in remote work on the continent as a result of the pandemic. In March 2019, the tech giant had launched two data centre regions in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, becoming the first global provider to deliver cloud services from data centres on the African continent.

Microsoft had reported in May 2020 that revenue from its intelligent cloud group which includes Azure grew by $12.3 billion representing a 27 percent year-on-year gain. During the revenue call, Satya Nadella said that with new regions added in the first quarter, Microsoft Azure now has more data centre regions than any other cloud provider.

Microsoft was not the only company that increased its data centre stake leveraging on the demand in Africa. Amazon, in April 2020, announced the opening of its first data centre operations in Africa.

The AWS Africa Region brings the number of AWS Availability Zones to 73 within 23 geographic regions around the world. Amazon also plans to open 12 more Availability Zones across four more AWS Regions around the world.

The company had in March also announced a partnership with Kenya’s Safaricom which enables the largest

telecommunication company in Kenya to sell AWS cloud services to its East Africa customer network. Safaricom will also become the first Advanced Consulting Partner for the AWS partner network in East Africa.

The Association said while it would be welcome news for a ‘no-positive-case’ status in any state or FCT, every state must ensure that it is following the testing guideline so that no cases are missed adding that the development has also made it difficult for the NCDC to discharge its duties.

The NMA in a statement on Saturday titled “preparing for the worst-case scenario”, and signed by its president Francis Faduyile, said it has reviewed the policies, programs and activities implemented so far in the management of the COVID-19 outbreak in Nigeria makes and his come up with some solutions.

On shortage of test kits and difficulty in collecting samples despite the announced increased capacity of 50,000 samples per day in 21 laboratories in the country, NMA blamed the problem on poor coordination, poor planning, poor forecasting and slow response to developments by the coordinating authorities.

“This depressing development saddens NMA because it will wipe away the efforts made so far by the Government, PTF and Nigerians in the public reaction against COVID-19 pandemic”, it said.

The Association had recently expressed its misgivings about the premature easing of the lockdown given that the number of infected persons is still on the increase, as is the death toll across the country from CIVID-19.

On Friday, May 8, the NCDC confirmed 386 new cases, raising the country’s total infections to 3912, with 679 discharged and 117 dead.

“This spike is a clear evidence that the peak has not been reached, not to talk of ‘flattening the curve’. The NMA is not oblivious of the socio-political and economic implications of continued lockdown, and the attendant hunger and acute deprivation in the population,” it said.

NMA maintained that the solution is not to loosen the lockdown prematurely, but for government to provide robust and widened palliatives’ policy and its practical and urgent implementation.

The NMA also advised that government uses the period of the lockdown to increase capacity and capability of doctors and health workers, and ramp up population testing which is the only reliable barometer to predict community transmission and prevalence.

The Association said it was dismayed that doctors and other health workers still do not have adequate PPEs and therefore opt for the local production of PPEs “in a nation where textile materials are not in short supply.”

It further demanded strongly the implementation of special risk allowance and insurance for health workers. The NMA appealed to the Federal Government to call on the State governments to make public the incentives in the form of Risk/Hazard/inducement allowances and life insurance policies they are offering their healthcare employees.

On tax Exemption on Allowances during COVID-19, the association called for an exemption from PAYE Tax, explaining that any taxation at this time would contradict the government’s laudable spirit of incentivising healthcare workers to deliver service needed to defeat COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.

On the Infectious Diseases Control Bill 2020, NMA called for the withdrawal of the Bill entirely and redrafting it, to remove any existing and future doubts in the people and public outcry against specific provisions of the Bill.