Leaders of the Group of Seven nations (G7) including the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, are meeting for a three-day summit in the UK from 11 to 13 June 2021. Their discussions will focus mainly on issues relating to COVID-19 recovery, climate change and trade.
Ahead of the G7 summit, Vera Songwe, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) conveyed the following points, which capture Africa’s expectation from the G7 leaders.
Songwe echoed the need for a “historic vaccines roadmap where the G7 stop hoarding, start sharing the financing, the doses and the manufacturing capacity needed to deliver on vaccine access.”
Her second point was on the urgent need for a historic green recovery financing and coordination agreement, leveraging the IMF Special Drawing Rights and World Bank balance sheets, meeting the $100 billion climate finance pledge, and doubling individual climate finance pledges by G7 countries.
The UN official’s third point was an interrogation on the G7 aid cuts, which disproportionately hit and hurt African nations (cut by two-thirds), disproportionately hit women (cut by 80-90%), and disproportionately hit the UN system agencies like UNAIDS, UNFPA UN Women.