Paris (AFP)
About thirty African and European leaders are meeting Tuesday in Paris with the major international economic organizations, at the initiative of France, to try to save Africa from the financial asphyxiation which threatens it after the pandemic.
Africa is a relatively spared continent in terms of health, with only 130,000 deaths from Covid-19 out of a global total of nearly 3.4 million deaths.
But she comes out financially bloodless.
The meeting in Paris, which starts at 1 p.m. local (11 a.m. GMT), under the leadership of Emmanuel Macron, will be divided into two sessions, one on the "financing and treatment of public debt", the other on "the African private sector".
The French leader will conclude the summit with a joint press conference with the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Félix Tshisekedi, at the head of the African Union.
- Funding gap -
The idea of this "Summit on the financing of African economies" germinated in the fall of 2020, when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculated that the continent was at risk of facing a financing gap of 290 billion dollars. 'by 2023.
Certainly, the growth of the continent, which experienced its first recession in half a century last year because of the pandemic, should rebound by 3.4% in 2021 and 4% in 2022. And a moratorium in place from April 2020 has helped give a little air to the most indebted African countries.
But that will not be enough.
Public debts are exploding on the continent, like poverty: in 2021, 39 million Africans could fall into extreme poverty, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).
On the epidemic front, "only a total victory, fully including Africa, will be able to overcome this pandemic", warned 18 African and European leaders in mid-April.
Calling for an "immediate moratorium on the service of all external debts (...) until the end of the pandemic" and a sanctuary of development aid, they also urged the IMF to allocate special drawing rights (SDR) to African countries to provide them with "the liquidity essential to the purchase of basic products and essential medical equipment".
These "SDRs" can be converted into foreign currency by countries that need them without creating additional debt.
The principle of a global issue of SDRs of 650 billion dollars has been established, the United States having declared itself in favor at the end of March.
It remains to be seen what will be allocated to African countries.
Indeed, these famous "SDRs" are distributed according to the quotas of each country in the IMF: the largest goes to the richest countries.
On paper, Africa would only benefit from $ 34 billion.
-Reallocation of SDRs -
Hence the discussion that will begin on a reallocation by developed countries of their precious SDRs to the poorest countries.
Another solution, defended by Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara, would consist in revising quotas to ensure better representativeness of African countries within the IMF - and therefore better access to this financing instrument.
France also intends to mobilize private investment to finance the immense development needs of a continent which aspires to depart from the logic of assistance.
A bilateral meeting between the French president and that of Mozambique is also scheduled on the sidelines of the summit Tuesday morning, to address in particular the situation in the north of the country, struggling with a jihadist guerrilla.
© 2021 AFP