President Macky Sall of Senegal has called on Africa’s development partners to agree to a renegotiation of the terms of the current multilateral system in light of shocks dealt to the global economy by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine.
President Sall, also Chairperson of the African Union, made the call at the opening of the High-Level Ministerial Dialogue at the 54th Session of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (CoM 2022) in Dakar, Senegal. The question at the heart of the dialogue was: “Can the development ambition of billions to trillions be achieved?”.
It was attended by African ministers, dignitaries from the private sector in Africa and other parts of the world, as well as experts from the UN system and other global institutions.
The President said, “No sooner had we begun to recover from the constraints of COVID than the war in Ukraine came. Although the war affects the globe, it has unique consequences for Africa. We are now forced as a continent to speak up and call for changes in the global system. Thankfully, these days, everybody seems to concur that the international system needs restructuring”.