The Metropolitan Archbishop of Ghana’s Archdiocese of Kumasi, the Most Rev. Gabriel Justice Yaw Anokye, has called for priority actions to aid African countries recover from economic downturn.
Archbishop Anokye who is the President of Caritas Africa made the call at the African Faith Leaders Strategy Meeting on Africa Inclusive Economic Recovery Campaign hosted by Caritas Ghana. The two-day meeting held from October 4 to 5, 2022 was targeted at helping African economies which are in distressed situations.
Addressing a Group of seven African Finance Ministers and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank representatives, Archbishop Anokye highlighted some “priority actions to enable Africa’s recovery with resilience and resumption of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement with the first being to resolve current debt crisis.
According to to him the crushing burdens of unpayable debts should be cast off which he believes has been backed by voices of leaders from various religious backgrounds including the Catholic Church.
He stressed that the G7 needs to spearhead the established order of techniques that deliver collective public and private lenders from timely fast and orderly debt crises resolution and furnish debtors a stay on debt bills even as they attain settlement with all lenders.
He also mentioned that debt remedy need to be reformed to enshrine the precept that human improvement and climate investments come earlier than debt bills.
He advised that nations under the Group of 7 African Finance Ministers as well as IMF and World Bank as key debt governing jurisdictions, need domestic legislation that save non- public creditor litigation from undermining global debt remedy efforts.
The Mobilisation of the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) is another action towards Africa’s economic recovery. The IMF is required to report regularly on the Special Drawing Rights conversion pledges, commitments and expenditures in order to improve donor accountability. The recipients must also commit to a transparent and participatory procedure to determine the destination of received SDRs.
“Ultimately, the more we can see SDRs benefiting our people, the greater support there will be in donor countries to do more with them,” Archbishop Anokye said.
To prevent future debt crises, he suggested adoption of responsible lending and borrowing rules and standards such as disclosure of covenants and approval frameworks.
“There should also be an increased concessional and long-term financing through a combination of capital increases in development banks and reform of capital allocation rules”, he added.
He announced that increasing the resources of these institutions must go hand in hand with strengthening policies and processes to combat corruption.
In improving Domestic Governance and Accountability, he charged Heads of state to improve governance by promoting transparency, inclusiveness and accountability of the public and natural resources. Though the technicality of economic management of the state governance is delegated to the finance minister, Heads of state must bear the responsibility for promoting an economy that serves the public.
Present at the meeting were some Bishops from African countries. Other participants were from Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal, Office of the National Chief Imam, Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches, Faith in Ghana Alliance, Staff of Caritas Africa and Ghana.
