Paris (AFP)

A moratorium on the debt of African countries is "an essential step" to help the continent overcome the coronavirus crisis, pending a total erasure of this debt, said Wednesday French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI ).

Macron urged finance ministers from G20 countries meeting on Wednesday to act on the moratorium as the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to overwhelm the fragile health systems of the poorest countries.

The moratorium "is a world first," said the French president. "The time of the crisis, we let the African economies breathe and not serve the interests of the debt. This is an essential step and I think it is a great step forward."

"Each year, a third of what Africa exports commercially is used to service its debt. It's crazy! And we have increased this problem in recent years," he said, recalling that was "in favor of a massive debt cancellation initiative".

"We absolutely must help Africa build its capacities to respond to the health shock and we must a fortiori help it economically," Macron insisted.

Even if, so far, the pandemic seems to affect Africa less than the rest of the world, the French president called for caution. "I am neither in the catastrophists, nor do I want to be in the naive. This virus today, it affects everyone".

"I have spoken a lot with my African partners so that they decide on maximum containment and delay the epidemic: the more they delay it, the more Europeans are in a position to bring them help, because we will not have the epidemic peak at the same time, "continued Emmanuel Macron.

He called for the mobilization of all international institutions and private foundations for the rapid development of a treatment and vaccine against Covid-19.

In this way, according to him, "we put ourselves in a situation, the day we have treatment, to make it accessible to the African continent at the same time as it will be accessible here. So no stories of intellectual property, of deadlines, money: we are getting in the capacity to do it. For the vaccine, the same. "

© 2020 AFP