African leaders will use a two‑day summit in Nairobi with French President Emmanuel Macron to make a fresh push on rethinking how to price risk on the continent and unlock investment flows into key sectors, Kenya’s foreign minister said.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and delegations from more than 30 African states are attending the Africa Forward summit, hosted by Kenyan President William Ruto and Macron. Among the heads of state confirmed to attend are the presidents of Botswana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia.
Macron, who chairs meetings of rich countries this year as holder of the rotating presidency of the G7, has said he wants to improve access to finance for Africa. France regularly convenes summits with African states, though this is the first it has held in a predominantly English-speaking country.
Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi told Reuters a focus will be on how to price risk, so that African states are no longer penalised by the perception they are riskier than peer countries.
“Africa has always been regarded as a high-risk area. And therefore access to credit, both for governments and for businesses, has always been pegged at higher interest rate,” Mudavadi said in an interview. “We need to address that. We need to have a situation where the financial markets globally start looking at Africa differently.”
Channels TV
