French President Emmanuel Macron this week hosts African leaders and chiefs of global financial institutions for twin summit meetings that will seek to help Sudan into a new democratic era and provide Africa with critical financing swept away by the Covid-19 pandemic.
With some two dozen African heads of state due to attend Tuesday’s summit, it will be one of the biggest in person top level meetings held during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We are going to the Paris conference to let foreign investors explore the opportunities for investing in Sudan,” Hamdok said.Hamdok and his government have pushed to rebuild the crippled economy and end Sudan’s international isolation under Bashir, whose three-decade iron-fisted rule was marked by economic hardship and international sanctions.
A moratorium on the service of public debt agreed by the Paris Club and the G20 in April last year was welcomed but will not be enough on its own. Many want a moratorium on the service of all external debt until the end of the pandemic.“We are collectively in the process of abandoning Africa by using solutions that date from the 1960s,” Macron said last month, warning that failure would lead to reduced economic opportunity, sudden migration flows and even the expansion of terrorism.