Nigerian pop star,Yemi Alade has joined a list of celebrities including actor Antonio Banderas and footballer Didier Drogba as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to raise awareness of poverty, inequality and climate change.
According to the United Nations. the coronavirus pandemic is expected to widen the poverty gap between men and women globally, undoing the progress made in recent years and pushing an additional 47 million women and girls into poverty.
To close this gap,Alade called for coronavirus recovery plans to focus more on women, particularly in her home country, saying she planned to use the new to help vulnerable people.
The singer rose to fame after becoming the first female Afro-pop artist to get more than 100 million views on YouTube, winning multiple music awards and featuring on Beyonce’s “The Lion King: The Gift” album last year.
“Women are among the 4 billion people who are trying to survive COVID-19 without any form of social protection,” Alade said in a video statement. I want to lend my voice to these women and other vulnerable people who make up half of the world that’s struggling to make ends meet. They don’t have the luxury of working from home and are putting their health at risk just to put food on the table” said Alade.
Countries must also be careful not to put climate change “on the back burner” as they plan to rebuild their economies after coronavirus, the singer said.“Climate change and poverty go hand-in-hand, and neither is gender-neutral. Women in developing countries, such as my homeland Nigeria, are disproportionately affected by both,” concluded the 31-year-old.
