Luanda - This Thursday, in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, African Heads of State and Government approved the Abidjan Declaration, calling on donours and international partners to mobilize resources of USD 100 billion for replenishment of the International Development Association – IDA 20.
With the Abidjan Declaration, African countries establish a common Agenda for prioritizing World Bank Group interventions on the continent, based on three main areas.
These are human capital development, job creation through private sector development policies and economic recovery.
The minister of Finance, Vera Daves, who spoke at the Summit of Heads of State and Government, representing the President of the Republic, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, emphasized the set of economic and social challenges faced by African countries before the pandemic of Covid-19, including economic downturns.
For the government official, the set of difficulties was expanded due to the effects of the pandemic and "with the lack of access to vaccines, the scenario only gets worse."
Vera Daves added that the current scenario requires coordinated, ambitious and committed action by IDA partners and donours, multilateral institutions and African countries that will help support and benefit from this replenishment, underlining that Angola joins its voice in this African initiative.
In the document, according to a note from the Ministry of Finance that ANGOP had access, the statesmen declare their strong commitment to improving the capacity of countries to absorb IDA resources through a more diligent execution of programmes and projects.
All statesmen reaffirm efforts to improve the capacity to mobilize tax revenues and use resources more efficiently and transparently, while improving national governance frameworks.
African countries have also recognized issues related to security, fragility and peace as an urgent priority.
In addition to the intervention of the host Head of State, other African statesmen also intervened, the operations director of the World Bank, IFM-International Financial Cooperation, respectively, Axel van Trotsenberg and Makhtar Diop.
Vera Daves heads a delegation that includes the Angolan ambassador to Côté d’Ivoire, the director of the Studies and International Relations Office, the deputy head of the Public Debt Management Unit, among other staff.
This high-level meeting follows the request of African leaders, made during the summit on financing African economies in Paris in May, in which they called for increased support for better and greener reconstruction after the Covid-19 pandemic.
IDA is the World Bank's financing arm for the poorest countries, guaranteeing grants and loans at very low interest rates, and already provided more than US $420 billion dollars for investments in 114 countries, 39 of which in Africa.
"Refueling will support a resilient recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and help the continent continue its economic transformation," reads the World Bank statement released Monday from Washington.
The debates at this high-level event aim to help identify the main priorities for financing the continent, which advocates a financial and policy package for an ambitious replenishment of the IDA 20.
