By Tapiwa Gomo The coronavirus pandemic has given some governments a free excuse for their perennial failures to resuscitate their ailing economies. Where corruption, mismanagement of State resources, poor prioritisation and bad governance perpetually impede economic growth, they are waving the excuse that the shutdowns have dealt severe blows on prospects of economic recovery. The wisdom of adopting that political approach is both myopic and short-lived. At the end of the day people expect their government to work with them to bring the country back on track. Excuses will not feed the people and it is time governments demonstrated leadership than political pandering. People’s lives are at stake. The COVID-19 pandemic moment is fertile for reflection, reconfiguring and repositioning economies. Developed economies are in the process of doing the same and yet some developing countries are waiting for donations or to be told what to do by wealthy countries as they often do. For example, wealthy governments have increased their domestic spending to protect and create jobs and to support workers. They have invested more than $12 trillion in measures to cushion the pandemic’s economic impact, according to the International Monetary Fund. Simply put, development aid from donor countries declined by 19% in 2020 compared to 2019 when nearly $80 billion was committed. This is despite that there is an increasing demand for development aid now, mainly by developing countries which have suffered major shocks on their chronically ailing economies. Paradoxically or rather as expected, the international financial institutions are in good business with aid from them showing a significant rise. In 2020, they provided more than $103 billion up from $74 billion in 2019. Again, simply put, the season for freebies, at least in the meantime, is over. Each country for itself. The vulnerability of developing countries to the pandemic and inability to resist the temptation to borrow from the international financial institutions was noted by the World Bank. “When the pandemic struck, many emerging and developing economies were already vulnerable due to record-high debt levels and much weaker growth. Combined with structural bottlenecks, this will amplify the long-term damage of deep recessions associated with the pandemic. “Urgent measures are needed to limit the damage, rebuild the economy, and make growth more robust, resilient and sustainable,” noted Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, World Bank Group vice-president for equitable growth, finance and institutions. What can poor countries such as ours do to recover? The first step is to use the little available resources to put in place short-term measures to reboot the public healthcare system in order to keep people alive and give them assurance. We have learned hard lessons, so this should not be difficult to comprehend and implement. The country has the capacity to revive the public health system if we get our priorities right. This will need to be linked to a comprehensive economic recovery strategy t