AFP, Baden-Baden :
Ministers from the world’s top economies heralded plans to boost development in Africa on Saturday, at an otherwise fractious G20 gathering in Germany.
Berlin, which holds the presidency of the powerful nations’ club this year, has made a hoped-for “Compact with Africa” a top priority for 2017.
Africa’s future represents “a major geopolitical risk” but also a “chance”, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters Friday as the meeting got under way in the genteel western spa town of Baden Baden.
In their final communique, G20 ministers committed to “fostering private investment including in infrastructure,” aiming at “sustainable and inclusive growth” for the continent. It was “revolutionary” to see Africa so high on the agenda of the G20 for the first time, said Senegal’s Finance Minister Amadou Ba on the sidelines of the conference.
Along with counterparts from Ivory Coast, Morocco, Rwanda and Tunisia, Ba was invited to join the world’s biggest financial powers at the table in Baden Baden.
South Africa is the only nation from the continent to hold G20 membership.
“This G20 initiative is well timed with its philosophy of suggesting rather than enforcing, as well as the idea of working together,” Moroccan Finance Minister Mohamed Boussaid said, emphasising that it was not an “aid programme”.
