Annual Meetings 2024: Reforming the global financial architecture to free up financing for Kenya and in Africa overall

"Today, Africa has $640 billion in outstanding debt and pays nearly $70 billion in interest every year. It would only be fair for us to have a financing mechanism that treats us on an equal footing". Kenyan President William Ruto's call at the African Union’s 5th biannual coordination meeting in Nairobi in July 2023, was unequivocal: the global financial architecture must be reformed so that Africa is no longer the world's poor relation.

For President Ruto, courageous decisions are needed to keep Africa’s countries’ debt burdens from being too onerous. 

The time has now come for this. The African Development Bank Group, Africa's leading development finance institution, will make this issue a top priority at its annual meetings --  "Africa's Transformation, the African Development Bank Group and the Reform of the Global Financial Architecture." To be held in Nairobi from 27-31 May 2024, the meetings will provide a platform for Africa to take up the challenge of reforming global financing institutions as outlined by President Ruto and other African leaders, and to propose a way forward.

The focus at the event will be on the co-construction of a new international financial pact with a "win-win" approach, as advocated by William Ruto. "Let's change the discourse! Let's not talk about us against them, North against South. Let's adopt a win-win approach," he said at a June 2023 roundtable on the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa, organized at the Paris Summit for a New Global Financial Pact. For despite the many challenges -- human, financial, climatic, technical and technological -- Africa is always on board for working with the global community to address humanity’s shared challenges.

To combat climate change, for example, Kenya, with the support of its strategic partners, has become one of Africa's champions in climate adaptation. Indeed, 90% of Kenya’s generated electricity now comes from renewables and the country aims to be a major producer of renewable energy on a global scale.

Agriculture in Kenya has a new face thanks to renewable energy

Cold storage rooms on the outskirts of Nairobi run at full speed. Powered by solar panels, they provide longer-term storage for horticultural products from rural areas some distance from the capital. Large quantities of flowers used to succumb to the heat, but now, fresh products arrive in good condition at local supermarkets. And, like the roses that flourish in the Rift Valley and on Lake Naivasha’s shores, or the tilapia from Lake Victoria, they are being successfully exported.

The energy sector has benefitted from Kenya’s five geothermal power plants at Olkaria Geothermal fields (905 MW), the Turkana wind power project (300 MW), and the first phase of the Menengai Geothermal 35 MW power plant, which started generating in August 2023.  Another independent power producer (IPP) has begun building a second 35 MW capacity power plant...Read more on AfDB

Source: AfDB