President Paul Kagame has said that the world should come to a point of action to redesign the global financial institutions' architecture given that there is room for everyone to benefit.
He was speaking, on May 29, during a Presidential Dialogue on "Africa's Transformation, the African Development Bank Group, and the Reform of the Global Financial Architecture," at the five-day AfDB Annual Meeting, in Nairobi, Kenya.
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The President joined other African leaders to attend the 59th Annual Assembly of the African Development Bank and the 50th meeting of the African Development Fund in Nairobi. The conference brought together key officials of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, leading academics and representatives of non-governmental organizations, civil society, and the private sector.
Addressing the key topic of the conference - reforming the global financial architecture, Kagame said that it is a no-brainer that things that were designed 50 years ago cannot work now.
"Things have changed and a re-think of a new design that fits the purpose must be into play. There is no question about it," he said, adding that the task at hand is finding the pathway to implementation.
The Head of State said that Africa should push for its voice to be heard and visible in a world that has enormous resources but are inequitably distributed.
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"Africa's interests must be taken care of, beginning with ourselves...it has to be with one voice but also loud, clear, and effective. For that to happen, we think about working together and representation," he said, adding that it is about self-representation with loud voices rather than just numbers.
"The reform we are talking about is how to disrupt the current architecture so that it includes significantly and visibly the interests of our continent."
Kagame questioned how anyone interested in the well-being of people in this world could sideline Africa with facts indicating that it will be the only place that will have a growing middle-income class in a few decades.
"It is even in the interest of the rest of the world that has marginalized Africa to contribute to the wellbeing of our continent because its growth based on the middle-class feeds into the growth of the rest of the world."
While Africa's growth means the world's growth, he noted that it cannot wait to be handed over the opportunity by anybody else.
"We, therefore, must be on the frontline fighting for this right for ourselves."
President William Ruto of Kenya commended African leaders who raised their voices to point out that there was something fundamentally wrong with global financial architecture which had been overlooked for a long time.
"The issue of reform is settled, it must be done," he said, noting that the type of financial architecture that Africa needs is one that provides long-term financing and grace period (tentatively 40 years and 10 years respectively), low interest rates, and an agile and flexible financing at scale and is climate-sensitive for it to respond to shocks of the new normal climate change.
"Our priority is to make sure we move this continent from tremendous potential to opportunity and investment," Ruto added.
Amb. Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Chairperson of the AU Commission, noted that the continent needs internal reforms for an integrated prosperous Africa that would be a basis for discussing matters on the international arena.
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"Africa needs to be looked upon in a different light. We need to improve our political, economic, institutional, and financial governance but we need the international community to revisit rules that were set up 80 years ago that are no longer relevant."
We have our priorities which are well defined in the framework of our development Agenda 2063. We are not asking for charity from the international community, we are simply asking to be treated on an same footing as others. #AfDBAM2024 pic.twitter.com/Hwfw7N8ORr-- Moussa Faki Mahamat (@AUC_MoussaFaki) May 29, 2024
AFDB President Akinwumi Adesina on May 27 announced that the bank and other multilaterals gained access to $20 billion in Special Drawing Rights of the International Monetary Fund.
