Victor Ezeja
Half a century after their high-level gathering was staged on the continent, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday opened their first meetings on African soil, lauding the resilience of Africans.
The IMF and World Bank last held their meetings in Africa in 1973, when Kenya played host to the event. Five decades later, the global financial bodies have now returned to the continent with the meetings underway in the Southern Moroccan city of Marrakesh.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelEvery three years, the Bretton-Woods institutions hold their annual gathering of finance ministers, representatives of the financial sector and development experts as well as central bank governors outside their Washington headquarters.
Marrakesh was supposed to host the meetings in 2021, but the gathering was postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Early last month, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake shook Morocco, killing nearly 3,000 people in the region.
The natural disaster again threatened to derail the event, but the government decided the epochal consultative meetings could go ahead.
World Bank and the IMF have been under pressure to assist the poor nations blighted by huge debt profiles and climate change. This is even as the continent faces an array of challenges ranging from conflict to a series of military coups, unrelenting poverty, and natural disasters.
Speaking at the Africa Inspired session of the meetings, IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, described Africans as incredible, saying they have continually supported the content.
She had in a speech delivered in Abidjan last week, stated that “a prosperous world economy in the 21st century requires a prosperous Africa”.
As the meetings kicked off yesterday, Georgieva pointed out that the Fund plays a crucial role in bringing countries together, adding that “this also means expanding the voice of emerging and developing countries.”
The multilateral consultations, which will run until Sunday, will among other themes cover the looming debt crisis in lower-income countries, climate change, high inflation as well as the fight against poverty.
