HOPES of a financial lifeline for COVID-battered Africa ran high at a summit hosted by President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, with the boss of the African Union hailing the talks as a potential “new deal” for the continent.
The summit brings together African leaders and global financial institutions seeking to provide Africa with critical financing after the COVID-19 pandemic depleted the coffers of the world’s poorest region.
Africa has so far been less badly hit by the pandemic than other regions — with a total of 130,000 dead compared with 3.4 million worldwide.
But the economic cost has been devastating, with the International Monetary Fund warning in late 2020 that Africa faces a shortfall of $290-billion up to 2023, undermining all efforts at development.
Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, whose country holds the rotating African Union presidency, praised the summit as a “great opportunity” and said Macron was offering a “new deal”.
“We will see to what extent we can raise funds to save Africa,” said Tshisekedi, adding that the pandemic “left our economies drained because we have had to spend all the little resources we had to fight the disease”.
Leaders warned that the risk inequality could open even further as richer countries implement massive stimulus packages while leaving Africa without the financing to keep up robust pre-pandemic growth rates.
“It is a very important moment, we gather here to reverse a process of a very dangerous divergence between advanced economies and developing countries, especially Africa,” said IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva in opening comments.
She warned that African economic growth would reach just 3.2 percent this year, far behind the rest of the world’s projected six percent.
Macron said that despite the challenges “Africa has everything to succeed, and the capacity if we collectively decide to propose a new reality”.
A moratorium on the service of public debt agreed in April last year by the G20 and the Paris Club — a group of creditor countries that tries to find sustainable solutions for debtor nations — was welcomed but seen as insufficient.
More than two dozen African heads of state are attending Tuesday’s summit, one of the biggest in-person top-level meetings held during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- AFP
