By Olimatou Coker
The Gambia’s finance minister Seedy Keita, has taken over the chairmanship of the African caucus of the IMF and World Bank Group at a meeting held in Bangui, Central African Republic recently.
The meeting was attended by finance ministers across Africa, senior officials of the IMF and World Bank Group (WBG), Central Bank governors and development partners.
The Gambia will host the next African caucus meeting in 2026
The Bangui meeting commended the IMF and the WBG for their continued financial, technical and advisory support in addressing the continent’s infrastructure challenges and seek the doubling of concessional financing from the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) and other development partners to meet the growing demand for modern and resilient infrastructure.
The African nations highlighted the structural imbalance in the global financial architecture, which results in disproportionately high capital and borrowing costs for African nations. This disparity persists even where countries demonstrate sound economic fundamentals and political stability.
The meeting called for the IMF and WBG to enhance their support in developing sustainable debt strategies that prioritise resilience-building investments and explore innovative financing instruments tailored to Africa’s needs. They further called for the IMF to ensure flexible policies, provide high access level and leverage its broad membership to advance Special Drawing Rights (SDR) rechanneling to regional Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) for resilient infrastructure development, given the challenging global context.
Furthermore, the IMF Governors urged development partners, including the IMF and the WBG, to scale up innovative investment solutions that meet the standard of efficiency, accessibility, and resilience, by effectively integrating climate-resilient and adaptive measures into planning, design and implementation of infrastructure projects to promote the continent’s transformation.
The Caucus further requested for impactful technical assistance and tailored capacity-building to help African countries make their regulatory and legal landscapes more business-friendly for competitive private sector investments in the infrastructure sector on a large scale and to reform their infrastructure services, so that they are financially sound and efficient.
The Ministers further urged the IMF and the WBG to strengthen engagement with regional bodies and authorities to leverage expertise, knowledge sharing, and avoid duplication of efforts. This includes strengthening capacity building on cost-benefit analysis of infrastructure investment, and support the design of bankable, resilient infrastructure projects.
The meeting resolved to continue undertaking and implementing the needed reforms tailored to country specific circumstances and providing the necessary enabling environment for Africa’s full participation in the development ecosystem.
