One can fully support Prime Minister Abiy's call for global solidarity and for an SDR issue, but let's realize that in this pandemic the United States has cut off funding for the World Health Organization, while in the early stages stricken Italy got more immediate aid from Cuba than from Germany. Under these conditions, it would be realistic for all African countries to suspend all debt payments until the end of the pandemic. There is no need to wait for approval, and those funds would be immediately available. African countries can then concentrate all internal resources and efforts on the public health mobilization required to defeat this pandemic, while still requesting and accepting material, technical and financial assistance from the rest of the world.

Soviet train tunnels in mountains to avoid going uphill? That's interesting. European Russia is mostly flat. And a list of the world's longest tunnels has many in China, but only a handful dating from the days of the Soviet Union, and those are the metro lines of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk, Kharkiv and Kiev. Admittedly those works are very grand. But they weren't built through mountains, or "just to avoid having to go uphill." Could Professor James please provide a source for his narrative on this point?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels.