my guest is nigeria's finance minister, zainab ahmed.n to avert financial meltdown, as well as help deliver stability? finance minister zainab ahmed in the nigerian capital, abuja, welcome to hardtalk. so, we are hearing warnings of a third covid wave in africa, where only about 1% of the population has been vaccinated. what is the situation like in nigeria? well, thank you very much, zeinab, for having me. thankfully for us, covid—19 pandemic has been well contained. so far, what we've seen in terms of the numbers is that it is declining in nigeria. between the past three months, the decline rate is about 23%. so it's a good story for us. we're continuing the vigilance of trying to make sure that another variant that would be more devastating than the one we have had does not come into nigeria. so it's well contained, and we're hopeful that will not escalate. all right. well, glad to hear that. let's look at the economic crisis, though, unleashed on the whole of the continent because of the global economic downturn as a result of the pa