By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Kenyan President William Ruto has slammed world leaders over a global lending system which he considers “unfair, it’s punitive, it doesn’t give everybody a fair chance” against developing nations, particularly Africa.
The Kenyan leader made the assessment in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of a two-day summit in Paris, French capital, calling for an overhaul of the international financial order to effectively help developing nations combat poverty and climate change.
At the moment, poorer countries have to pay as much as eight times more in interest rates than rich nations “because they are profiled as risky”, Ruto said.
But the Kenyan leader said his country is not looking for any handouts.
“Some people do not want a mechanism where people are equal, they want us to continue this conversation where we are looking for help,” Ruto said.
“We are tired of this story” painting Africans as “victims of climate change” who are “looking for favours” and “complaining”, he said.
“We do not want to look for help. We want to participate in the solution,” Ruto said late Thursday, on the eve of the summit’s final day.
Ruto said he wants to attract private investment more than development aid for his country, calling for reform of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
He also backs a rethink of debt management of developing nations and the deployment of international taxes on shipping, aviation and financial transactions.
Kenya pays a whopping $10 billion annually to service its debt.
“If we use it instead for development of the country, it will be immediate, it will be big resources and it will have huge impact,” Ruto said.
He said this could be achieved if the debt owed to international lenders, including the World Bank and IMF, were converted into a 50-year loan facility with a 20-year grace period.
This way, Kenya would “not run away” from its debt, which would have “just been rescheduled.”
