UN General Assembly
2021

The IMF’s unprecedented $650 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation offers a unique opportunity to provide additional financial resources to address the vast and surging inequities that the pandemic has revealed, and a crisis to come. Africa’s allocation is some $33 billion. If ever there was a time for an African Marshall Plan, it is now. The SDR infusion should be seized on as a catalytic effort to enable Africa to leapfrog to the next level of human development and ensure sustained global prosperity. African leaders have advocated for a prudent and transparent channelling of 25 to 35 per cent of SDRs — that is, between $160 billion and $250 billion from wealthier countries to vulnerable ones, $100 billion of which should be dedicated to Africa. We welcome the support that has been expressed for some degree of SDR redistribution by the European countries represented at the Africa Summit in France, the IMF, the Group of Seven and the Group of 20 (G-20).