BRICS Summit 2023: Key Goals

AFRICAN LEADERS CALL FOR NEW GLOBAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE

On 22-23 June 2023 the UN Summit for a New Global Financial Pact was hosted by the French Government in Paris.

The summit was attended by over 100 world leaders, including African leaders, China’s prime minister and Brazil’s president, with the goal of boosting crisis financing for low-income countries, reform of post-war financial systems and freeing up funds to tackle climate change.

Kenya’s President William Ruto was one of the leaders who spoke at the summit. Lena Petrova’s video on BRICS contains a clip from Ruto’s comments, where he forcefully spoke for many in the Global South:

“We don’t want the IMF and World Bank. We need a new [global] financial architecture where governance, where power, is not in the hands of a few people.

We need to agree on the sharing of power so that all of us can have access to resources that go to making sure we invest in:
1. renewable energy and decarbonization
2. adaption, mitigation, smart agriculture
3. restoring our climate, our planet, our biodiversity and making sure our carbon sinks work

Things are not going forward,they’re going backwards – tokenism will not solve this problem. We have a much bigger problem. [The West] is not hearing us.”

President William Ruto

See President Ruto’s full speech at: https://youtu.be/hPEb5xONN_s

Source: Lena Petrova, 2 July 2023. https://youtu.be/ZNE1WaDdmwE