The global financial system is “dysfunctional and unfair” and is “failing developing countries”, UN Secretary General António Guterres has said at the opening of the annual African Union leaders’ summit.
In a stinging rebuke he said that countries are being “left in the lurch” as they are denied debt relief and being charged “extortionate interest rates”, he told his audience in Ethiopia.
“As a result, vital systems are starved of investment.”
He called for a total rethink of the “global financial architecture” that made decisions that reflected the “needs of developing countries”.
Mr Guterres also said he was deeply concerned about a rise in violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In addition, he talked about climate change and the war in Ukraine, saying Africa was suffering the effects of crises it had not created.
Also speaking at the start of the summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had a similar message.
“Nearly all of us want to put our economies back on a growth trajectory but this will not happen without sufficient restructuring to make our external debt sustainable,” the Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.
African heads of state have begun their annual continental meeting in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
This year’s African Union summit is being held amid increasing insecurity in parts of the continent and a major food crisis as several countries face severe drought.
This is the first major gathering of leaders from across the continent in Addis Ababa since the AU brokered a peace deal between the Ethiopian government and forces from the country’s Tigray region. The deal ended one of Africa’s deadliest armed conflicts.
Following the agreement fighting has stopped and access to humanitarian aid has increased.
Now the AU has to address security problems from the Sahel in West Africa to the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Meanwhile millions face hunger in the Horn of Africa due to the most severe drought in two generations.
The two-day summit is also expected to call for a boost in the implementation of the continent-wide free trade deal.