2023-07-08 09:58:11
THE NEWS SEEN BY… – Reallocation of 100 billion dollars of special drawing rights (SDR), allocation of 100 billion dollars for the financing of climate action, taxation of financial transactions… On the sidelines of the summit for a new global financial pact initiated by Emmanuel Macron and in which around 40 Heads of State and Government took part from 22 to 23 June, the British NGO Oxfam, which federates around 20 humanitarian organisations, lobbied intensely so that concrete decisions might finally be taken in favor of vulnerable countries.
According to the organization, regarding $3.9 trillion per year until 2030 will be needed by low- and middle-income countries to meet their climate and social spending needs.
ReadSenegal, Chad, Ethiopia… A mixed record for African countries at the Paris summit
Highly publicized, the great economic mass was ultimately only a “recycling of old broken promises”, in the words of Cécile Duflot, director of Oxfam France and former French minister.
Fati N’Zi-Hassane, his colleague of Niger origin who took over as head of the Africa directorate in November 2022, following having coordinated for several years the human development program of Nepad – the development agency of the African Union (UA) – she believes that it is no longer possible to “maintain a system that protects the extravagance and excesses of the richest to the detriment of the lives of the poorest”. Interview.
Jeune Afrique: Did the Paris summit lead to progress for greater financial mobilization in favor of Africa?
Fati N’Zi-Hassane: This summit is a disappointment, because we expected to see a will to move forward on certain fundamental issues such as those relating to the overhaul of the international financial system. Instead, this summit has only recalled commitments made in the past with the promise that this time they will be kept. We obviously cannot be satisfied with such results.
First of all, the rich countries must respect the commitments made at past meetings
Oxfam denounced “an indecent lack of will by rich countries to redistribute their wealth” in favor of the poorest populations on the planet. However, not everything was negative…
Yes, there has been good news: Emmanuel Macron has called for mobilization for international taxation. But the rich countries must first respect the commitments made at past meetings. This is why I side with Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana, who insisted on the need for a clear follow-up mechanism to ensure that all promises are kept. There have also been debt restructurings, but we are still in the anecdotal and the “case by case”.
While Zambia has secured a restructuring of its external debt, nearly half of which ($6.6 billion) is held by China, Western countries have effectively brushed aside the idea of canceling debt repayments for a majority from poor countries. Why was this solution advocated by Oxfam?
It would have allowed African governments to obtain the fiscal space they need to better fight once morest inequalities. African countries are borrowing at outrageous rates – up to 20% – on the international market. Debt service often exceeds a quarter of the national budget of countries, when these are not astronomical proportions as for Zambia (51%).
This leaves very little room for governments to invest in basic social services to mitigate the effects of a climate crisis they did not create. They are thus held by the throat and depend on the good will of the rich countries, on the part of the prince.
Oxfam had participated in the preparatory discussions for the summit. What proposals did you push?
We have placed great emphasis on the overhaul of the international financial system, which was inherited from colonization. Let us recall that during the Bretton Woods agreements in 1944 which marked the birth of the current world monetary organization, the overwhelming majority of African countries were not yet independent and did not exist in a form which would have allowed them to be present at the negotiating table.
At the time, a number of Western countries that designed the IMF [Fonds monétaire international] and the World Bank [BM] were colonial powers. The creation of these two major financial institutions was therefore part of these colonial projects.
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Nearly eighty years later, there have been no major reforms of this global financial architecture, nor any radical change that would have allowed the framework to serve all States, including African ones. Admittedly, French President Emmanuel Macron has called for mobilization for reform and António Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has recognized an outdated, dysfunctional and unfair system, but we we can clearly see that reservations persist on the part of other Western countries.
We are not going to come together every time there is a crisis for a leader of the western world to come and save Africa
France has rightly decided to reallocate 40% of its SDRs. Are we still at the stage of promises?
Yes. We would like the reallocation of the 100 billion dollars of SDRs which was decided in 2021 to be accelerated. We also asked that two new issues of SDRs equivalent to 650 billion dollars each be decided by 2030. And that upstream, the rich countries undertake to redistribute a part without conditions to vulnerable countries and to the Africa in particular.
That said, it is not normal that this monetary instrument mainly benefits developed countries. We are not going to come together every time there is a crisis so that a leader from the Western world comes to save Africa. We want the system to serve the interests of all countries according to their needs and in an equitable manner.
Civil society organizations like Oxfam urge many Western countries to mobilize funds for Africa. What do you demand of African countries themselves, whose governance is often problematic and which are not always transparent in the management of their own resources?
We work a lot on good governance with communities to give them tools that allow them to understand how, for example, a budget works at local or national level. But it is above all up to them to assert their rights and exert a form of pressure on their leaders to finally demand accountability and thus ensure the proper management of resources.
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We are very careful regarding how governments invest in public services and the type of tax policies used to mobilize resources. Do they favor a redistribution of wealth or do they aggravate inequalities? These areas of concern are discussed with the leaders we meet.
How to combat inequalities in Africa in the context of the fight once morest terrorism, particularly in the Sahel?
Africa is obliged to deal with these subjects at the same time. We have no choice, because these phenomena feed each other. Fighters in terrorist movements often come from communities that have been abandoned, and so-called jihadist groups proliferate where the state is not present.
Oxfam carries out projects around the peace-development-humanitarian triptych that help support the communities most affected by these issues. It is a very Western vision to say like Emmanuel Macron: “No country should have to choose between reducing poverty and protecting the planet. From an African perspective, financing for development and financing for climate action are one and the same.
Does Africa have the right to continue to exploit its oil and gas?
This is a rather delicate subject. Even at Oxfam, we have not yet adopted a common position on this issue. While it is necessary to take into account all the elements and approaches that will make it possible to move towards a gradual transition, there is however a need to consider the particular situations of African States which need to develop. And to grow, you need energy and resources. We cannot ask Africa, which contributes in an extremely marginal way to global warming, to make efforts by depriving itself of its energy resources when it has to finance its own development.
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