UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres underscored Africa's vast potential and noted that it continues to be held back by an international system set up by and skewed in favour of the victors of the Second World War.
This has left the continent's nations crippled by high borrowing costs, insufficient climate financing and underrepresentation in global decision-making bodies.
"It is not acceptable that African countries pay more than three times more than developed countries in order to obtain the loans they need for the development, Mr. Guterres insisted, in a call for reforms of the international financial architecture, greater investment opportunities for African countries and permanent African representation on the Security Council .
On this last point, the Secretary-General noted that France and the UK were "preparing legislation" to limit the use of the veto by the five permanent members of the Security Council in cases involving genocide or other egregrious crimes.
"These questions are on the table or will be soon on the table," he said. "We need to have all countries recognising that…a Security Council in which there are three European members, one Asian member and one North American member and no Latin America or African members [and] just one Asian doesn't correspond at all to the world of today. And this creates a problem of legitimacy. And with legitimacy comes its effectiveness in guaranteeing peace and security in the world."
The UN chief also addressed conflicts across the continent, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan, renewed dialogue in South Sudan, progress towards peace in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and political solutions to insecurity and terrorism in the Sahel.
Peace in these conflicts requires that countries "many times from outside Africa, stop being the spoilers of these conflicts, providing weapons to the parties to the conflict, and making it more difficult to find peaceful solutions", Mr. Guterres insisted.
