"Africa Oil & Power will welcome delegations of French-speaking African governments and European financiers to the first AOP Investment Forum in Paris, an event entirely dedicated to getting the best deals between European investors and African companies signed," reads a statement to Lusa.
The announcement of the Forum from 16 to 18 June comes in the context of a new foreign development policy for Africa on the part of France and aims to "promote synergies between oil and renewable energy players and create a positive narrative to balance development needs in Africa, climate objectives and economic growth.
Among the countries that will send delegations are the Lusophone countries Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Mozambique, in addition to eight other countries that include Nigeria, the largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, and Senegal, which received almost a billion dollars of foreign direct investment in 2019.
"Energy, in all its forms including oil and gas, is the mainstay of Africa's recovery from the covid-19 pandemic, and we believe it is the right time for African businesses and governments to look again at European partnerships and foster business that will empower their economies," commented AOP Executive Director Renée Montez-Avinir.
The French government announced in early December the holding of a summit on the financing of African economies for May in the French capital, which comes at the same time as the Minister of Economy announced a review of the principles of foreign aid to African nations.
"It's not the covid-19 crisis that creates the rise in debt, it occurred at a time when Africa was already in a phase of rapid and significant over-indebtedness," said the leader of the Paris Club, which brings together the world's main official creditors, Guillaume Chabert, at a conference on debt in sub-Saharan Africa.
During the virtual conference "Africa again facing the debt wall," on Thursday, the leader, who is also part of the team at France's Ministry of Finance, stressed that "treating debt will not be enough" and argued that "a more global financing strategy is needed, including more external flows, especially private, and reforms to strengthen Africa's private sector and the economic attractiveness of the continent.
The French initiative, which coincides with the Portuguese presidency of the European Union, comes against a backdrop of rising debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratios, an indicator to which international investors are particularly attentive as they are an indicator of the country's ability to honour its financial commitments.
African countries already benefited from debt relief in the 1990s, when a joint International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank initiative for Highly Indebted Poor Countries significantly reduced the amount due.
But between 2006 and 2019, debt to external creditors rose from 100 billion dollars to 309 billion dollars, which, with the arrival of the new coronavirus crisis, threw much of the region into an economic recession that makes it much more difficult to meet financial obligations.
According to several estimates by international financial organizations, sub-Saharan Africa's financing gap could reach nearly 300 billion dollars by 2023.
