Foresight Africa at the 2026 Spring Meetings: How Africa can build back better from global crises

LANDRY SIGNÉ: Hello, I am Landry Signé,, a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Welcome to the Foresight Africa podcast, where I engage with distinguished leaders in policy, business, academia, and civil society who share their unique insight and innovative solutions to Africa’s challenges while highlighting opportunities to advance engagement between Africa and the world. 

Today we are on the sidelines of the 2026 Spring Meetings organized by the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund. Twice a year, these international financial institutions bring together the world’s most prominent figures in the field 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 Professor Kevin Chika Urama, chief economist and vice president for economic governance and knowledge management at the African Development Bank. Welcome to the Brookings Institution Foresight Africa podcast, Professor! 

KEVIN CHIKA URAMA: Thank you.  

SIGNÉ: I’m delighted to have you join me during this very busy week, and I truly appreciate you taking the time to share your insights with our audience. 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?  

URAMA: Thank you very much for having me. And thank you to Brookings for the continued thought leadership on key issues that drive and shape world economic dynamics. 

As we conclude this year’s Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, for me a number of things jumped out to me in all the conversations that we’ve had. 

First is geopolitical tensions, geopolitical fragmentation, and multi polarization of the global economies is now the new normal. We’ve seen recurrent shocks that the global economy faces, and we’ve also seen polarization in global governance. For policymakers a take home would be that managing for uncertainty has become certain. Therefore, economic policy management should now move beyond short term, quick crisis response strategies to longer-term resilience capacity building. So that for me is one clear takeaway. 

The other clear takeaway is that the reevaluation of the risks and the benefits of artificial intelligence will continue to shape the global response to these challenges in the coming days and years. And that is where regulation and governance of these emerging technologies becomes super critical for us to harness the productivity gains associated with AI technologies and ensure that there are guardrails that prevents the risks, which are already emerging. Because we can already see that AI agents are becoming a little bit more independent and have capacity to do great things, but also capacity to make mistakes. 

And because of that, finding ways of setting guardrails to manage that is very, very critical. And for institutions, governments, and everyone, it is no longer a question of whether to integrate AI into policymaking and into processes and programs and activities. But a question of how to integrate it, basically to take a big leap into that and try to see how we can harness that technology moving forward. 

My third takeaway is that fiscal challenges that emerge from these global shocks will continue to be like a new normal. We’ve seen the shocks from COVID, shocks from the war in Ukraine, now the conflict in the Middle East. But more and more of these shocks will continue to come. 

So the whole gospel around building macroeconomic stability, transparent public finance management, debt management, and tools to manage inflation effectively will continue to remain fundamental for economic growth, for resilience, and for the ability to build more robust economies that will be able to absorb these shocks as they go. 

And then the fourth thing is that we’re seeing risks to the governance of the global economy. So international cooperation and collaboration remain critical, even as a push towards regional cooperation is an important part of resilience capacity building.  

For example, for Africa, if we talk about the conflict that’s happening in the Middle East, we see a number of transmission channels through which this can affect African countries: food and fuel price inflation, the global supply chain disruptions, but also the capital and exchange rate, market volatility. And all these could actually be addressed if Africa can implement the Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement in practice, removing trade and non-trade barriers for trade between African countries, removing visa restrictions to allow for free movement of goods and services within the continent, but also implementing what I call preferred procurement, which is basically friendshoring in trade and in procurement 2.0, I would call it. 

We see the hotspots of oil and gas endowments in Arica, the Dangote refineries, the renewable energy potential scattered all over this continent – Africa has it all. Africa has everything it needs to build more robust economies that are more resilient to these global shocks that have become the new normal.  

So the question is then how the policies that we have within the continent, the immigration policies and trade policies and all those things, enable integration that will build better collaboration amongst countries. Because in times of resilience, collaboration is key for sustainability. 

SIGNÉ: Insightful, Professor! And 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?  

URAMA: Yeah, I’ll be a little bit controversial on this one because, one, reflecting on years and years of global convenings and big pronouncements that one would go back home with hope that the leaders have come together and there are some solutions coming out. The main challenge there is that the implementation often does not match those big pronouncements. And in my sense, one of the reasons is that we’re looking for global consensus in a world where fragmentation and multi-polarization are now the new normal. 

So we need to start looking for plurilateralism, where it’s more about the coalition of the willing, so that countries that see value in addressing particular recommendations that come out of these meetings do not have to wait to get a consensus of everybody and every state on this planet before they start making a move. 

So I think it’s about thinking about inclusivity in a manner where you’re including all the interested parties without closing the doors for others to join later. That, for me, will be a pragmatic way of beginning to see that the declarations that are made in these large convenings translate into policy actions in countries. 

Secondly, there’s quite a lot of push towards private sector capital mobilization to augment public sector resources. And I have a concern in that regard because there appears to be a push to use guarantees and other instruments to socialize risks and privatize gains. 

Private sector entities should be still willing to take on risks. Those risks shouldn’t be political risks and other risks that aren’t market risks. But market risks are what private sector agencies usually trade on. So I fully support the use of guarantees, but those uses of guarantees should be measured to ensure that we’re not creating moral hazards in the markets by buying off private sector risks that are supposed to be part of their risk-taking arrangements.  

Another thing is that these conflicts that we see, especially the Middle East conflict, can drive to positive action, which is accelerating the Green Growth Revolution, the green transition. In the sense that all of a sudden, countries may begin to realize that ramping up renewable energy investments is in the interest of countries. So this, for me, could be a positive takeaway. There’s nothing positive about a war, but a positive takeaway that could come in the sense that the long awaited rapid acceleration of renewable energy revolutions and green transitions may begin to take roots as a necessity, not because it’s an environmental policy. 

For example, in Africa that has more than 45% of global technical potential in renewable energy, what prevents the continent from harnessing all those and delinking itself more from oil and gas in order to be able to become more resilient when the next energy price shock will hit? Because it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. So that’s one positive that could come out of this. 

There’s another positive from the perspective of the continent. You and I know that intraregional trade in Africa is still miniscule, below 18%. But then this is a continent that has huge opportunities for accelerating intra regional trade and the instrument for doing that, the AfCFTA, is already there. So this can be a drive towards greater intraregional trade on the continent and also globally, and that will help to reduce the length of the global supply chains and deliver positive outcomes for growth in countries. While also delivering positive outcomes for the environment by reducing the carbon footprint of trade. So this could be another positive thing that could come out of what is going on now. 

But needless to say that the downside risks are many, including inflation on the continent, while estimating that inflation would already come down to below the double digit by 2026, it already came down from 21.3% in 2024 to 13.4% in in just above 13% in 2025. So we were expecting it to hit around 9.5% in 2026. But this may not happen because of the huge fuel and fertilizer price inflations that we are seeing because of the global shock that we have. 

So going forward, I think we need to be more pragmatic in global action, using coalition of the willing much more than looking for global consensus all the time.  

SIGNÉ: What a powerful way to conclude, Professor! Thank you again for joining us today and for sharing your incredible thoughts and words of wisdom.  

URAMA: Thank you.