AFRICA’S influence on issues of global importance remains far too narrow for a continent of 1.2 billion people who are bearing the brunt of external shocks, finance ministers said.
‘We are at the table and increasingly so, but we occupy a small stool at the table,’ Zimbabwean Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told reporters Saturday after the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. ‘Most of the time we are recipients of support – of aid, of resources – as opposed to the giver of resources to the rest of the world and that creates a naturally uneven relationship, but we should strengthen ourselves and we should be listened to,’ Bloomberg quoted him as saying.
Assistance would be ‘more impactful’ if contributors, including international financial institutions, listened to those they are helping who better understand the conditions on the ground, Ncube said.
Africa’s weight at the table is ‘very narrow’ and it remains ‘marginalised’ even as the continent’s population and youth demographic is second only to Asia, said Situmbeko Musokotwane, Zambia’s finance minister.
Their comments add to the growing list of criticism by African leaders of rich nations in Washington last week as emerging markets deal with the fallout of developed nations’ policy decisions, including aggressive interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve that raise loan-servicing costs and have effectively locked some nations out of capital markets.
The Fed’s actions – which strengthened the greenback – also raised the cost of dollar-priced energy and food imports particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where floods and droughts are adding to price pressures induced by Russia’s war in Ukraine.