Key points:
- ONE Campaign urges AU leaders to push for fair financing
- Calls for lower borrowing costs and a $25B African fund boost
- Without action, Africa risks long-term debt and underdevelopment
AS the geopolitics of our world change, bold, visionary African leadership is needed now more than ever. As African leaders convene for the African Union (AU) Summit, the ONE Campaign is calling for bold and decisive action to address Africa’s deepening fiscal crisis. Across the continent, governments are forced to choose between servicing debt and providing essential services like education and healthcare, an unjust reality rooted in decades of financial systemic underinvestment. Without collective, innovative, bold, action-oriented leadership from African leaders, Africa will be left behind.
The AU’s 2025 theme, Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations, underscores the urgent need to confront t
hese historical and structural injustices. As the AU calls for reparations, Africa must also push for a new, fit-for-purpose global financial architecture, one that enables the continent to break free from the shackles of debt, secure affordable capital and invest in a future of shared prosperity.
To advance this vision, the ONE Campaign urges African leaders to champion two transformative proposals at the AU Summit:
- The support for Cost of Capital agenda under South Africa’s G20 presidency to address systemic financial inequities that result in excessively high borrowing costs for African nations.
- The replenishment of the African Development Fund (ADF-17) with a target of $25 billion to unlock concessional financing for essential infrastructure, healthcare, education and climate resilience.
These initiatives are critical to address the short them and long-term effects of the fiscal crisis, reduce the strain of debt servicing and enable investments that drive long-term economic growth. Without urgent reforms, Africa’s youth and future generations will remain trapped in a cycle of austerity, underdevelopment and lost opportunity.
Serah Makka, Africa Executive Director at the ONE Campaign, emphasised the urgency of these actions:
‘African countries pay an average of four times more to borrow than wealthier nations, with debt servicing consuming up to 58 percent of government revenues. In some cases, those are funds that should be invested in social infrastructure. For too long, Africa has operated within a global financial system that does not fully account for its unique economic realities, forcing nations into a cycle
of high borrowing costs and unsustainable debt. As the African Union rightly calls for justice and reparations, we must also push for a financial system that serves Africa’s interests. The current financial architecture was established when African countries were colonies. They cannot work for independent sovereign nations. By championing the Cost of Capital agenda and replenishing the African Development Fund, African leaders have a historic opportunity to reshape the continent’s economic future, ensuring that Africa’s resources are used to build lasting prosperity for generations to come.’
The gathering of African Heads of States and Governments should inspire hope in the average African citizens. Hope that the actors of change have gathered and will collectively build a better Africa, one bold, decisive action at a time. African leaders can lay the foundation for an era of inclusive and sustainable development. This is a chance to ensure that Africa’s next generation thrives, free from the constraints of unjust debt and historical financial injustices. Africa’s future is in your hands. Africa’s future depends on your leadership.
