GOVERNANCE
Amid mounting geopolitical and economic
challenges, we must drive comprehensive international financial reforms and enhanced support for Africa’s development initiatives
An African agenda for global financial reform
Moussa Faki Mahamat , chair, African Union Commission
T his meeting [of the African crises, aggravated by the effects of the global COVID19 pandemic, the after-effects of which are far from having encouraged the social and political stability of our Member States, despite Africa’s resilience to the global catastrophe. To cope with this, all our Member States have been caught up in the spiral of ever more pernicious indebtedness, which keeps them under the yoke of creditors with suffocating demands despite the many promises to lighten this burden. This excessive recourse to debt, Development Bank] is taking place in a context marked by a tangle of geopolitical and economic although it can be explained by a set of endogenous factors, is also attributable to an external financing model combining development aid, debt relief, the promises of green financing and the attractiveness of African countries for FDI [foreign direct investment]. This model, set out in the 2015 Addis Ababa Declaration on Financing for Development, has subsequently been taken up by similar meetings, such as the one in Paris in 2021. The shortcomings of this model
have been established on the basis of objective data … Although not responsible for global warming, Africa is suffering the consequences without benefiting from the financial solidarity enshrined in the successive Declarations of the various Conferences of the Parties. The management of the international financial system, which is totally beyond Africa’s control, imposes high financing costs on it, along with the negative impact of financial crises. Disparities in the response to the COVID19 shock have clearly indicated that the increase in liquidity through the creation of SDRs [special drawing rights] has not significantly benefited Africa, which received only a minimal 5.1% for a population of one billion four hundred million people … It seems to me to be urgent to work on an in-depth reform of international governance in order to propose and adopt
relevant solutions for countries faced with the problems of sovereign rating[s], excessive debt, the effects of climate change, tax evasion and illicit flows, the need to strengthen multilateral banks and so on. To defend Africa’s interests in these areas, it seems logical to me to invite all the African financial institutions, present here and even those that are absent, to support the Union in order to shift the global economic and financial balance. I would also like to welcome the recent accession of the African Union as a permanent member of the G20. This membership marks a decisive turning point and brings new hope for Africa to be involved in the dynamic process of reforming global economic and financial governance. The G20 is the appropriate forum for our institutions and our countries to effectively initiate, together, the process of formulating common African
140
G20 BRAZIL: THE RIO SUMMIT — 2024
globalgovernanceproject.org
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease