"This high-level meeting on July 15 follows African leaders' request during the summit on financing African economies in Paris in May, at which they advocated for increased support for better and greener reconstruction following the covid-19 pandemic," reads a World Bank note, distributed this Monday in Washington.
"In a context where African countries are dealing with the devastating impact of the pandemic, continued support from the World Bank, particularly IDA, is critical to help these countries meet financing needs, which were already high before the pandemic," the text adds.
IDA is the World Bank's financing arm for the poorest countries, securing grants and loans at very low interest rates, and has provided more than $420 billion for investments in 114 countries, 39 of which are in Africa, the most supported continent.
"The replenishment will support a resilient recovery from the covid-19 crisis and help the continent continue its economic transformation," the statement further pointed out.
Discussions scheduled for the 15th "will help identify key priorities for financing the continent, and advocates for a financial and policy package for ambitious IDA replenishment."
Among the heads of state the World Bank expects to be at the meeting are the presidents of Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritania, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda, according to the list released in the statement, which also expects to have at the meeting the leaders of regional institutions and development partners.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 3,980,935 deaths worldwide as a result of more than 183.7 million cases of infection with the new coronavirus, according to the most recent report by Agence France-Presse.
The African continent records more than 146,000 deaths out of 5.67 million cases.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the United Kingdom, India or South Africa.
