The day-long Summit on the Financing of African Economies wrapped up in Paris on Tuesday and left a lot of people scratching their heads wondering what exactly was the purpose of the gathering.
Unlike Monday’s event that focused on Sudanese debt relief and featured host Emmanuel Macron unveiling a series of concrete measures, including the cancellation of $5 billion of loans that Khartoum owes Paris and a $1.5 billion loan for Sudan to repay its obligations to the IMF, the final communiqué for Tuesday’s summit was non-committal and vague.
The main take-away was an appeal to wealthy members of the International Monetary Fund to reallocate their portion of an upcoming issuance of $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights to low-income countries in Africa and elsewhere. The communiqué also called on the international community to pay more attention to debt sustainability and to promote “low carbon development.” That’s pretty much it.
There were no announcements of any new multilateral debt forgiveness initiatives, new investments, or enhanced support of African public health systems in their struggle to combat the spread of COVID-19.
China did participate in the summit, albeit minimally. Vice Premier Han Zheng spoke by videoconference from Beijing. Interestingly, neither the Chinese Foreign Ministry nor any state media outlet provided coverage of Han’s remarks, so, at least for now, we don’t know what he said. But given the circumstances, it probably wasn’t that noteworthy.
Key Highlights from the Final Communiqué of The Summit on the Financing of African Economies
- IMF SPECIAL DRAWING RIGHTS: “We call for the swift decision on and implementation of an unprecedented general allocation of IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) that is expected to amount to $650 billion, of which about $33 billion to increase reserve assets of African countries, and urge countries to utilize these new resources transparently and effectively.”
- SUPPORT FOR AFRICAN PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT: “To boost growth and jobs, we support the African national strategies and we welcome the ambition to develop an Alliance for Entrepreneurship in Africa, with a broad pan-African reach and a strong business focus.”
SUGGESTED READING:
- Elyseé Palace: Declaration — Summit on the Financing of African Economies
- Bloomberg: France Among Nations Seeking to Triple Africa’s Share of New IMF Funding by Ania Nussbaum and Alonso Soto
- Quartz: African leaders can try take back control over aid with one request by Hannah Ryder and Sophia Kladaki
