Joint statement – Renewed international partnerships and solidarity with Africa Africa Forward Summit.

We, the Heads of State and Government of France and African countries, met on 12 May 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya, at the Africa Forward Summit, together with the representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank Group, the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the West African Development Bank (BOAD) and other development actors such as the Agence Française de Développement group (AFD), the Pact for Prosperity, 
People and the Planet (4P). 

We welcome the French G7 presidency and its work on development financing and international partnerships. We intend for this declaration to contribute to the work of the members and guest countries.

France and Europe trade and economic relations with Africa remain a source of collective stability and shared prosperity. 

With the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, of which the consequences extend well beyond the region, we emphasize that this relationship is more valuable than ever and conducive to increased mutual resilience. We acknowledge the destabilizing effects of the conflict on the global economy, its financial stability, and very especially on global energy markets, which have driven up costs for African economies and disrupted agricultural inputs, compounding existing vulnerabilities in food security across the continent.

We acknowledge the demographic shifts and pressures with more young people entering the workforce in developing economies and the urgent need for job creation. 

We emphasize that the future of Africa’s development lies in a partnership of equals serving mutual interests and shared prosperity. We acknowledge that the existing development financing system has proven its limits to address contemporary challenges. While reaffirming that official development assistance (ODA) remains a critical component of international support, we underscore that development cooperation should be aligned with nationally determined priorities and development strategies, as well as country ownership principles. We therefore commit to advancing a renewed approach of international partnerships, moving towards mutually beneficial partnerships based on shared priorities, co-creation, co-investment including through research, capacity building and training capacities, knowledge sharing and long-term value creation, and taking into account the limits of the current 
development system and different national circumstances and levels of development. This renewed partnership should be based on mutual respect, sovereignty of states over their natural resources, and the principal of shared value creation to the benefit of African people.

We commit to advance genuine partnerships, in the spirit of the Pact for Prosperity, People and the Planet (4P), to improve the efficiency of the global financial architecture for Africa, and to uphold the sovereignty and resilience of African partner countries through strengthened ownership, while ensuring that the most vulnerable are not left behind. This work will be consistent with and complementary to the one carried out in the context of International financial institutions and in the context of the UN Financing for development forum.

We also commit to continue working together to strengthen our political engagement on global public goods, trade and economic cooperation to attract more investment and stimulate regional and continental integration to achieve sustainable growth, more local value addition, and the creation of numerous and decent jobs, especially to address women and youth unemployment, in line with our Sustainable Development Goals. We recognize that taking into account vulnerability in access to financing is important in this respect.

To that end, we commit to continue supporting all African economies to develop, industrialise, diversify exports, and integrate into regional markets. We reaffirm our commitment to the full operationalisation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as the primary engine for Africa's economic sovereignty and industrial transformation. We will promote the sustainable development of value chains to strengthen the ability of local industries to compete in regional and global markets and to diversify and secure global supply chains.

We further commit to promoting high international standards for quality, safety, transparency and sustainability in infrastructure, goods and services across African markets while taking into account different national circumstances and levels of developments. Upholding these standards is essential to achieve the sustainable development goals, protect consumers, strengthen value chains and support the long-term competitiveness of African economies.

We welcome the increasing recognition to how debt affects investment and development in African countries. We look forward to further work and new insights,to strengthen debt transparency, support efficient restructuring, and sustain high quality financing and strong macroeconomic fundamentals, to help enhance fiscal space and support growth. We welcome ongoing efforts to strengthen interlinkagesbetween debt, climate and nature, with the support of the 4P, by exploring innovative financial instruments, including, where appropriate, Climate-Resilient-Debt-Clauses, the use of Debt for Development swaps especially in the context of commercial bond debt or other Sustainability Linked Financing. These are complementary to 
concessional finance and other non-debt instruments when necessary.

In this respect, we commend the role of concessional tools such as International Development Association (IDA) and African development fund (ADF) in delivering efficient concessional finance, promoting debt sustainability, private investment, and support for fragile states, and financing African national and regional investment priorities.

This partnership should integrate the specific challenges of the poorest and the most vulnerable African partners that are exposed to external shocks, constrained fiscal space, geographic remoteness, limited of access to capital markets, and conflictaffected contexts. We stress the importance of supporting vulnerable populations, particularly by recognizing that extreme poverty, early childhood development, resilience to climate impacts, better nutrition and food security and health as well as access to education and gender equality are areas where efforts are needed to foster a better future for the next generations.

To bring this partnership to life, we affirm the need for coordinated and decisive action at the global, regional and national levels. We reaffirm our shared commitment to accelerating sustainable development, economic transformation and the fight against climate change and its consequences in Africa, leaving no one behind.

The international development cooperation landscape is at a decisive moment, marked by increased fragmentation, a historic contraction of public resources, and pressing global challenges. In response, we recognize that ODA must be complemented by a renewed commitment to international development cooperation, based on mutually beneficial partnerships, and shifting away from a traditional aid-based paradigm. We reaffirm the importance of concessional financing, which is essential for funding solidarity policies and meeting basic needs in the most vulnerable contexts, and our support for ODA which remains a key metric of donors’ budgetary efforts and concessional support. We however acknowledge the importance of mobilising private capital has become even more crucial and that ODA does not capture the full spectrum of financial flows contributing to development in partner countries. We recognize the work undertaken on the Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD) which aims to adopt the partner country perspective and provides a complementary view of relevant flows for development.

Our partnerships must contribute to mobilizing all forms of development finance, international and domestic, public and private, including innovative sources to increase self-resilience and sovereignty, based on partners’ ownership and at a scale commensurate with the continent’s needs. To deliver and address growing needs, we need a more efficient, resilient and inclusive financial architecture for Africa, one that relies on a broader donor base, concentrates concessional resources where they are most needed, and better aligns all forms of financial flows with sustainable development goals. In support of national led and funded policies, donors should 4 make sure that concessional financing targets the most pressing needs and contribute to health and early development policies as well as fighting extreme poverty.

We underline that private financing mobilization requires, first and foremost, improving the quality of institutions, the bankability of projects, the business environment and the macroeconomic framework, as well as greater fiscal and legal stability supported by transparent governance. We also emphasize the importance of a predictable international economic, trade and financial environment in supporting investor confidence and enabling investment at scale. We welcome efforts to further assess how risks and barriers to large scale private investment affect African and EMDE markets. We look forward to additional analysis in this matter, including from the 4P initiative.

We acknowledge that strengthening public domestic resource mobilization (DRM) is an essential target to finance sustainable development, improve the business climate and build trust. We acknowledge that improving DRM should not only target stronger public revenue collection on current formal economic actors, but also contribute to broaden the tax base by a reduction of the informal sector, enhancing the use of digitalization and technology to enhance collection, ease procedures and tax administration, a reinforced fight against tax evasion and illicit financial flows, enhanced spending efficiency and transparency as well as strengthened domestic financial markets and sustainable debt management practices to create a conducive environment for private investment.

We also acknowledge that meeting such preconditions is not sufficient, and that the continent faces a specific constraint on allocation and pricing of risk. In order to overcome this challenge, strategic actions will be required on several key areas.

We underline that fragmentation and competition between institutions is detrimental to an efficient architecture for development financing and call on all actors to work as a system and ensure whenever possible streamlining, interoperability and simplification of procedures.

First, we acknowledge the critical role that deeper local capital markets and stronger local financial and banking systems have to play, as essential enablers of private investments. We underscore the need for African countries to improved access to guarantee schemes, concessional financing and long-term investment.

We recall that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as the main actor of the global financial safety net, is playing a key role in Africa through its three main roles of surveillance over members’ economic and financial policies, providing financial assistance when countries are experiencing balance of payments problems, and delivering capacity development in the economic and financial fields. We commend the role of the IMF in Africa. We welcome the World Bank Group’s focus on job creation for Africa by enabling infrastructure, supporting business-ready policies and mobilizing private sector capital, in particular in critical sectors such as energy and infrastructure, agribusiness, 5 healthcare, tourism, and value-added manufacturing.

We welcome ongoing sector specific partnerships such as Mission 300 (M300), AgriConnect and the Africa Initiative for Medical Access and Manufacturing (AIM2030) as well as the support to local entrepreneurs throughout Africa with the expansion of local champions initiatives.

We welcome the vision of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), to advance the New African Financial Architecture for Development together with other development partners, and we welcome a number of other initiatives undertaken to strengthen financing for Africa, including:

- a call for (i) AfDB to increase its involvement, cooperation and synergies with the African Trade and Development Insurance (ATIDI), (ii) further involvement of regional and non-regional partners to reinforce the balance sheet of ATIDI, such as the support of the EIB to expand African countries membership in ATIDI for instance;

- a continued joint focus on accelerating local capital markets development to scale domestic capital mobilization and access to long-term local currency financing, with concrete local-currency facilities being deployed to that end, including a first-of-its-kind EUR 100 million cross-financing operation between BOAD and Proparco, the collaboration between EBRD and Proparco in the context of the DELTA initiative under the Sevilla Platform for Action, and the partnership being developed between BOAD and EBRD. This momentum is also reinforced by the launch of a local currency borrowing program of up to $500 million between IFC and a leading African commercial bank, to support IFC's local-currency operations across this major African bank’s countries of operations;

- AfDB–EBRD’s joint work on an integrated facility for high-growth MSMEs in key African sectors, combining structured debt, quasi-equity with targeted advisory support.

- further work to enhance mobilization of private capital, including through development of programmatic and portfolio solutions – such as securitization – and greater standardization to enhance MDBs’ capacity to originate-to-share/distribute at scale (so as to develop “MDBs portfolio as an asset class”), enabling more investments in Africa.

Second, we acknowledge the need to scale up high-quality guarantees and credit enhancement mechanisms to reduce the cost of capital for the private sector, in particular with regards to low-carbon technologies, with a view to crowding in long term investors.

At the multilateral level, we welcome the initiative brought forward by the World Bank Group and its guarantee platform hosted at the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, to simplify access to financial guarantees for development projects in emerging markets through a single hub. We encourage further ambition to expand guarantee issuance, including scaling-up support for Africa with a view to reaching up to $6.4 billion in annual issuance by 2030 by the WBG guarantee platform. We 6 encourage all actors in a position to do so to provide more guarantees and credit enhancements.

Mobilizing private investment is key and we welcome the progress made by the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database (GEMS) co-led by EIB and IFC to improve risk assessment and transparency for investment, including in Africa. We also welcome the launch of the Global Green Bond Initiative, a Global Gateway and Team Europe initiative (EIB, EBRD and several European DFIs) aiming at supporting the development of green bond markets in emerging and developing economies.

At the regional level, we take note of the mapping led by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) to identify gaps in the financial architecture for Africa. We support efforts to build a more integrated and efficient system, one that harnesses the continent's own financial institutions and resources. We also acknowledge the AfDB proposal to channel Special Drawing Rights to MDBs, and we encourage countries in a position to do so to consider this possibility.

In that regard, we welcome the AfDB’s intention to help address gaps in the current African guarantee architecture, in a manner that complements and avoid duplication of existing instruments and institutions. We support the role of ATIDI as a panafrican platform for risk mitigation aimed at strengthening and better tailoring risk coverage, fostering coordination among actors, and enhancing African ownership in mobilizing private investment.

At the national level, we recognize the pivotal role of public development banks in crowding in private finance. We support capacity-building for African national and regional development banks so they can they play their full part in financing the continent’s development. We welcome the collaboration between MIGA, the Finance in Common System (FiCS) and the International Development Finance Club (IDFC) to explore a guarantee platform benefitting public development banks, with a view to expanding their capacity to mobilize private capital. We also commit to develop country-led platforms, or other coordination mechanisms, supported by national, regional and multilateral partners, to unlock more private capital into essential infrastructures and services. These country-platforms require governments’ ownership, shared strategic vision and priorities and partnerships aimed at fostering collaboration among development partners and ensuring the development finance system’s ability to operate at scale, for instance through derisking platforms.