African leaders used the second day of a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron to push for reforms that would make it easier for their countries to access credit and fund major investments.
More than 30 African government leaders are attending the Africa Forward Summit in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the first time France has held such an event in an English-speaking country.
Macron has hailed the summit - which he said had mobilized 23 billion euros of investments in Africa - as evidence of France’s commitment to a relationship of equals with counterparts on the continent.
At Macron’s invitation, Kenyan President William Ruto will attend the G7 summit next month in Evian-les-Bains, France, and Ruto said he hopes to build momentum at the Nairobi summit for proposals he can take there.
African leaders argue that their countries suffer from an unduly high perception of risk among lenders, which can make credit prohibitively expensive and slow economic growth.
"The issue ... is not liquidity. It is risk architecture," Ruto said in remarks on Tuesday.
Macron said on Monday that he supported creating a first-loss guarantee mechanism for investments in Africa, which would help boost capital flows into the continent.
"We are going to go together to Evian in mid-June to convince the G7 to endorse that," he said.
Other proposals that have been discussed in recent years are changes to the methodologies used by credit ratings agencies, which African leaders accuse of overstating the continent's risk, and the establishment by rich countries of a debt refinancing mechanism for heavily indebted nations.
Major credit rating agencies including S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s and Fitch reject accusations of regional bias, saying their ratings are based on globally applied, publicly disclosed criteria.
The two-day summit in Nairobi is being attended by more than 30 African presidents, deputy presidents and prime ministers as well as the heads of multilateral financial institutions and business executives from across Africa and France.
France is hoping to use the summit to develop new partnerships in Africa after seeing its influence fade in former colonies in West Africa, where several governments have expelled French troops and diluted economic ties.
