African nations have received one-eighth of the monetary aid from the IMF that G7 countries got, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres revealed on May 21, while taking part in the G7 summit in Hiroshima.
"The IMF allocated 650 billion US dollars in Special Drawing Rights – or SDRs – during the [COVID-19] pandemic. The G7 countries, with a population of 772 million people, received 280 billion US dollars. The African continent, with 1.3 billion people, received only 34 billion US dollars," stated Guterres.
The UN chief also emphasized that the global financial system is anachronistic and needs to be reformed.
"The global financial architecture became outdated, dysfunctional and unfair," the UN Secretary-General said.
He called for the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, economic agreements drawing the main lines of the post-WWII international financial system.
"This [the disproportional money allocation] was done according to the rules [...], but from a moral point of view, there is something fundamentally wrong with the rules themselves," he said.
In addition, Guterres stated that more than half of the world is suffering from a deep financial crisis.
According to him, in the world, 52 countries are either in technical default, or at high risk of default or face extremely expensive market financing. At the same time, middle-income countries are not eligible for concessional financing and do not have access to debt relief.
Recently, the IMF provided a $3 billion bailout to deeply indebted Ghana. Commenting on the matter, Anne Abaho, a lecturer in international relations and security studies at Nkumba University in Uganda, told Sputnik that while such financial support is necessary, it "is not actually invested in human capital". What would really help change Africa's economic positions is financial help aimed at particular sectors, as well as a change in global trade policies involving Africa's improved access to international markets.