Leaders of the Group of Seven nations (G7) including the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, are meeting for a three-day summit in the UK from 11 to 13 June 2021. Their discussions will focus mainly on issues relating to COVID-19 recovery, climate change and trade.
Ahead of the G7 summit, Vera Songwe, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) conveyed the following points, which capture Africa’s expectation from the G7 leaders.
Songwe echoed the need for a “historic vaccines roadmap where the G7 stop hoarding, start sharing the financing, the doses and the manufacturing capacity needed to deliver on vaccine access.”
Her second point was on the urgent need for a historic green recovery financing and coordination agreement, leveraging the IMF Special Drawing Rights and World Bank balance sheets, meeting the $100 billion climate finance pledge, and doubling individual climate finance pledges by G7 countries.
The UN official’s third point was an interrogation on the G7 aid cuts, which disproportionately hit and hurt African nations (cut by two-thirds), disproportionately hit women (cut by 80-90%), and disproportionately hit the UN system agencies like UNAIDS, UNFPA UN Women.
ECA’s Songwe echoes Africa’s expectation from the G7 summit
WFP receives €8.5 million from Germany for emergency food assistance
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) received a contribution of €8.5 million for 2021-2023 from the people of Germany to provide emergency assistance to save lives and the livelihoods of communities affected by conflict and climate change in Ethiopia. It is part of Germany’s flexible funding for the Eastern Africa region.
Germany’s donation will contribute to WFP’s Tigray emergency response that aims to reach up to 2.1 million people with urgently needed food and nutrition assistance. A total of 5.2 million people, or 91 percent of Tigray’s entire population need emergency food assistance due to conflict.
The donation will also support WFP’s refugee response in the country and help to deliver life-saving and life-changing emergency food assistance to communities in Ethiopia’s Somali region who are affected by extreme climate shocks.
“WFP welcomes this timely and generous contribution from the people of Germany to enable us to respond to the most urgent humanitarian needs across the country,” said WFP Ethiopia’s Representative and Country Director Dr. Steven Were Omamo.
Africa Climate Resilience Investment Summit ACRIS V
The Fifth Africa Climate Resilient Investment Summit ACRIS V under the theme “Embedding and financing climate resilience for Africa’s green recovery” will be held virtually from 16th to 17th June 2021. The two-day program will deal with investments for climate resilience. The panel discussions will deal with cross-border energy, resilience, nature-based solutions, smart agriculture, innovative finance, and Africa Climate Resilience Investment Facility.
The Africa Climate Resilience Investment Summit (ACRIS V) is in its fifth year, following the highly successful ACRIS IV held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in June 2019.
ACRIS V will be held in partnership with The World Bank, Nordic Fund and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
The overall objective of ACRIS V is to strengthen the capacity of African institutions, including national governments, river basin organisations, regional economic communities, power pools and others, together with the private sector to plan, design and implement investment in relative sectors. These sectors include cross-border energy, resilience, nature-based solutions, smart agriculture, innovative finance to increase their resilience to climate change. The AFRI-Res (Africa Climate Resilient Investment Facility) will be discussed during ACRIS V.
UAE efforts highlighted at webinar on women’s empowerment, protection
Efforts by the United Arab Emirates to empower and protect women on the regional and global levels were highlighted in a webinar held on 10th June 2021 by the UAE Embassy in Addis Ababa and the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth Affairs, under the theme “Women’s Empowerment and Protection: UAE and Ethiopia Perspectives.”
Speaking at the opening of the webinar, Talal Al-Azizi, Head of the Political, Economic, and Media Affairs Section at the UAE Embassy in Addis Ababa, said that women’s empowerment and protection have always played an important role in the UAE’s development and have driven the country’s ascent to the global arena. “The UAE has prioritized the empowerment and protection of women as one of the key pillars of its foreign policy and foreign aid strategy,” he added
