Foresight Africa at the 2026 Spring Meetings: Claver Gatete on guiding global development through uncertainty

LANDRY SIGNÉ: Hello, I am Landry Signé, senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program and Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Welcome to the Foresight Africa podcast, where I engage with distinguished leaders in policy, business, academia, civil society to share their unique insights and innovative solutions to Africa’s challenges, while highlighting opportunities to advance engagement between Africa, the US, and the global community. Today we are on the sidelines of the 2026 Spring Meetings organized by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Twice a year, these international financial institutions bring together the world’s most prominent figures in the fields of development finance, including central bankers, ministers of finance, heads of global and regional financial institutions, corporate CEOs, entrepreneurs, and civil society leaders.

I am joined now by his Excellency Claver Gatete, under secretary-general at the United Nations and executive secretary of the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa. Welcome, Excellency.

CLAVER GATETE: Thank you so much.

SIGNÉ: So, we are so excited to have you back on the Brookings Institution’s Foresight Africa podcast, and I’m particularly delighted to have you join us during this incredibly busy week. We truly appreciate you taking the time to share your insights with our audience.

Excellency, as the Spring Meetings conclude, amid rising economic fragmentation and shifting geopolitical dynamics, what are the most consequential takeaways for policymakers and which signals should the world be watching most closely in the months ahead?

GATETE: No, thank you very much. Really this is a very good opportunity for the world to get together and look at the economy globally, not necessarily at the national level, but also at the global level. And in our case, what it means for African countries. This is the area that we work in as the Economic Commission for Africa. And as you recall, last year we are talking about debt, so much of it.

But this year we are also adding another kind of shock. The shocks have been there since 1970s when you had the energy shocks. We had the international financial crisis in 2008, 2009. Then we had COVID. And later on, we had the war in Ukraine. And also, now what is going on in the Middle East together with, of course, the recurrent issue of climate change that is affecting many countries.

So, what one concludes is that the shocks are becoming more normal. They’re regular, and they’re affecting our own countries. And that’s why the countries need to create their own resilience. How do you deal with this kind of issue as we’re trying to address the debt issue, which is currently at 64% debt-to-GDP ratio on average on the continent. And so many countries are paying every year the amount that is more than the investment that you could have in health and education. They were already constrained.

And now there is an additional burden of the current crisis. The crisis, which is affecting the core of our economic development, including the energy because over 80% of African countries are net importers of energy. And you can imagine now the impact it has had if it is being disrupted and nothing goes through the Strait of Hormuz. And more than 15 countries, they import more than 50% of their energy through that Strait of Hormuz. So, they’re highly affected.

And what that means is that this one fits into the inflation part because there is gas, the fuel. There is also the gas that we use for cooking and for other kind of activity. But that’s not the only one. Because now of course if it goes above a hundred dollars per barrel, you can imagine the impact. And for fertilizer, because we are an agricultural country on the African continent, almost every country, and having the prices of the fertilizer imports go up. Now it has increased by 48 percent. 48 percent! And that means that actually it’s going to affect the next harvest. The next harvest which has a very serious impact not only on the ordinary citizens but also becomes an accelerator of other prices that are going up. Very, very serious.

To make it worse, our macroeconomic situation is affected first before anything else. Currently, we have 31 African currencies that have been affected, that have depreciated. We don’t know what’s going to happen next week and the week after, which requires an emergency solution that is going to help them, for them to be able to again stabilize the macroeconomic situation.

None of the African countries so far has fuel reserves of the three months that is required by International Energy Agency. And that means that as the situation gets worse, then there is so much we are expecting in terms of a very serious impact that for some countries this is the lifeline.

And that’s why we’re saying, when we came here, we are trying to say, okay, if this is a crisis that is already worsening, the bad situation of the debt that we already have, that means something has to be done. And what should we do?

And there, of course, you start at the country level in terms of how they are organizing themselves to create some kind of resilience at the country level, but also at the multilateral institutions to see what facilities are available that we can tap into. What emergency facilities are you putting in place that can help our own member countries, at least as a relief as they deal with this impact?

The most important risks that we have is that we don’t know when this war will end, which is very uncertain that you can address something today, what about tomorrow? Because we don’t have control over, over this one here. So it is really a consequential situation that is very, very disturbing that’s going to affect many of our member countries.

And so, what we are discussing here, and our takeaways was, really, we need to do something and do it very quickly.

I gave a statement at the consultative meeting with the managing director of the IMF. And I was really saying that something has to be done now because last year when we talked about debt, in the spring, we launched the debtors’ platform. Meaning that as you get more heavily indebted, there is a place you can go to that can help you in terms of providing you with the capacity, providing you with assistance, and then all of them getting together, they could be able to have a bargaining position as debtors, because usually it had been one way to the creditors who were making the, uh, all the decisions. There was no involvement of the debtors. They didn’t have the capacity. So, the bargaining was not equal. And this is why at least that one has taken an action and has been noted by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which was very useful.

And then for this one here, the crisis. Already we have done an analysis. We have done now together with UNDP, Africa Bureau, the African Government Bank, and the African Union Commission, we all got together and came up with a document, a policy recommendation on what needs to be done. But this is based on all the information that we have up to now. And that one here was launched yesterday at the African Union mission, and this was very useful because it’s also recommending what needs to be done by the African countries in terms of dealing with this issue.

SIGNÉ: Insightful, Excellency. I really like how you connect the global with the continental, with the national, and also looking ahead to explore some solutions. Looking beyond the Spring Meetings, what will it take to translate today’s commitments into measurable on-the-ground impact, and how can institutions ensure accountability, speed, and scale in delivering results?

GATETE: First of all, in as much as there are shocks, they should not really prevent countries to also long look at their long-term strategy. For example, on the African continent, we’ve been working very hard on the implementation of African market, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area. It is the largest market of 1.5 billion people, and it’s a market which has been approved by all the heads of state. And now we’re into the implementation.

And one issue that is there, apart from the infrastructure and the rest of it, is how do we create industries? How do we add value to all the products on the continent? And here we are at the Economic Commission for Africa, working with member countries to establish the regional value chains so that at least from the production to the industry establishing of the special economic zones, de-risking that can be able to attract more investment has been our core work that we have been doing.

And by doing that, then we are adding value on every product. We have identified 94 different regional value chains from the critical minerals to agriculture. Like, if you want, just as an example, the cocoa, the cotton, the coffee, and also in livestock and in other areas also that we have identified, areas where we can package and make sure that at least we have a regional value chain that is going to help in terms of adding industries. That’s what creates jobs.

That is also what helps that the resources are retained within the African continent. And this has become very useful to, we are getting a lot of uptake. And that’s why we are packaging de-risking to make sure that we can attract all the investments everywhere. But of course, some of the investments are going to be affected, especially from the Middle East, but at least we are packaging, we are looking long term on how to address this issue.

The other issue is what we’re also seeing that is critical even for this crisis is the infrastructure part in as much as now, for example, the Dangote is functioning at full capacity in terms of fuel refinery at 650,000 barrels per day. But how do you move it from one country, from Nigeria, to other countries if you don’t have the infrastructure that can support it?

SIGNÉ: Absolutely.

GATETE: So, this is very urgent.

Then secondly, we have seen that the ports, some of them, like the Durban Port in South Africa, this one here because of the Strait of Hormuz that is closed now. Some of the ships are going round, they’re going round now in the Red Sea and they come to the Cape of Good Hope. And then from there, because they don’t have enough facilities, then they go to Durban to, you know, that’s where… Now bring them from Durban to the hinterland, it becomes now a problem. The same thing, of course with Maputo and with the Lamu Port in Kenya, they’re all swamped.

But at the end of the day, this oil, this fuel, has to be taken to member countries, and that one is proving to be a problem if we don’t have the infrastructure, which we are also working on as something that is going to help not only address this crisis, but also in the future address other trade issues, which is now becoming very expensive.

We also have the issue of fertilizer, and yet it can be produced in Africa. We know that Dangote is producing a lot of fertilizer. But mainly exporting it actually in the Caribbean, a big chunk of it, and less in Africa.

And Morocco is through the OCP, the organization that really produces this fertilizer, has been working, although part of the inputs that they use, which is ammonia, comes from the Middle East.

And with that it means that you have to have coordination. So we’ve been talking to the Moroccans and actually was, that’s where we had our our conference of finance ministers and the minister to work with Dangote to see that together they can supply fertilizer to the African continent. And then we see the logistics that is necessary, but at least be produced in Africa, does not stop you from importing, but at least you can cover a big chunk of all the needs.

So, these are some of the things that can be done to handle the situation on the short term. But of course, you know that everything require money.

SIGNÉ: Absolutely.

GATETE: And within our coordination with Africa Government Bank, the Africa Government Bank is establishing the African financial architecture

SIGNÉ: Yes.

GATETE: because most of the resources we have in terms of our sovereign wealth funds, our reserves within the central bank, within the insurance, with so many, pension, they are all kept outside the continent. They have to be kept in a AAA rating organization. But here, there are over 4 trillion, over 4 trillion. But we want to see how some of these resources could be managed within the Africa Government Bank. And if you add others that are really owned by the development financial institutions on the continent, it’s quite significant.

So we’re working on a coordination mechanism where some of these resources, rather than being kept outside, can be used in Africa for the development of Africa because they own those kinds of resources.

But what they fear is risk. But we know that Africa Government Bank has AAA rating. And that’s why we are saying that something has to be done differently to make sure that if there is another shock that hits, at least we are not surprised and we can be able to handle it before even we come to the IMF and World Bank to ask for extra support.

And that’s why what we are trying to do to make sure that we can be self reliant going forward. But at the same time, as I mentioned, we need to trade among ourselves. And also trade value addition. We processed products rather than trading in primary products. And that’s why working from all kind of fronts to make sure that our market works for Africans.

SIGNÉ: What a beautiful way to conclude. Thank you so much, Excellency, for sharing your words of wisdom with us today.

GATETE: Thank you very much. It’s my pleasure.