The fifty-fourth session of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development will focus on “Financing Africa’s recovery from the impacts of COVID 19: breaking new ground”.
Development financing gaps have widened significantly since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The annual financing gap for developing countries to meet the Sustainable Development Goals has increased by $1.7 trillion. For Africa, annual Sustainable Development Goal expenditures are expected to rise by $154 billion annually as a consequence of the pandemic and by an additional $285 billion over the next five years to ensure an adequate response to COVID-19.
The current financing landscape in Africa is characterized, however, by low resource mobilization capacity, rising public debt, undue burdens associated with debt servicing and maturities, a surge in financing needs occasioned by the pandemic and limited bilateral and multilateral financial assistance for recovery from the pandemic. Policy actions to close the continent’s financing gap include a critical focus on the quality and adequacy of domestic and external financing and the impact of such financing.
The unprecedented scale of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic demands disruptive approaches that break new financing ground and promote innovative and sustainable options to scale up public financing, to crowd in private sector financing on favourable terms, to leverage climate financing and to facilitate trade finance.
Mobilizing the continent’s own resources for development is key to closing the financing gap. The fifty-fourth session of
the Conference will feature deliberations on measures to crowd in private sector financing, articulate mechanisms to leverage special drawing rights and climate financing and build consensus on how to support governments in building synergies between domestic and external financing from both public and private sources.
At its forthcoming session, the Conference will be calling upon all stakeholders to step up efforts to transform the continued threat of the pandemic into an accelerator of growth and global prosperity.