The Seville summit was a success in terms of organisation and Spain's image, but it fell short of nipping in the bud the problem that is suffocating the African continent.
The Seville Summit on International Financing for Development came to an end yesterday, bringing to a close a gigantic event in which more than 15,000 delegates representing nearly 150 countries took part over four days in scorching heat (in case you needed any excuses when addressing international financing for the impact of climate change). The organisation of the Summit has been a success, demonstrating our country's commitment to sustainable development and to the so-called Global South, the developing countries.
The challenge of this meeting was a major one: to find solutions for the least developed countries at a time of global crises. They began with the pandemic and its subsequent hangover, followed by the war in Ukraine and joined by the increasingly aggressive climate emergency. In the last year, came Donald Trump's radical turn against international cooperation, but also the reduction of major donors in their development aid allocations (including European countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and neighbouring France). A complicated context, then, for a summit that appealed to international solidarity at a time of profound global lack of solidarity.
The US withdrawal from the great final agreement that accompanied this summit, ratified by up to 149 countries of the world, gives us the clue to the 'uncomfortable' moment we are living through, and which has made everything end with a bittersweet feeling: from reading the final document of the Conference, called the 'Seville Commitment' (negotiated over the last few months until it had the support of 192 countries), one does not come out convinced that things are going to change.
Because the Seville Compromise has not allowed for a solution to what we could call the big elephant in the room: external debt. It has not been able to come up with bold measures that would put an end to a glaring reality: that more than 75% of the world's low- and middle-income countries spend more on debt servicing than on health.
In 2023, for the first time, sub-Saharan African nations spent more on debt interest payments than on education. Between 2019 and 2021, an alarming 25 African countries (almost half the continent) spent more on interest payments than on health. This means that almost six in ten Africans (751 million people) live in countries that spend more on interest payments on foreign debt than on basic services for their citizens. How is Africa going to develop with this $1.8 billion-plus slab of debt choking it?
Every euro or dollar that Africa spends on interest payments is one less to advance development, train its youth or improve the health of its citizens. And in terms of the country and its economy, the high cost of debt is eroding fiscal space and import capacity and preventing Africa from developing a diversified economic base, strengthening local production value chains and reducing its dependence on raw materials for export. Debt, in short, continues to favour the colonial model of commodity exports. Plunder.
For there is a fundamental issue in this whole affair that is deeply perverse. Historically, most of this debt was held by official creditors, such as high-income countries and multilateral lenders (e.g. the World Bank and the IMF). However, this dynamic has changed dramatically, as private creditors are now the largest holders of Africa's external debt, accounting for more than 43% of the total. These include banks and investment funds, such as Blackrock, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and UBS, which seek the highest possible return on their money without regard for development. The rest is divided between multilateral creditors (34%) and bilateral creditors (23%, with China being the most relevant here).
This dependence on commercial finance means that some countries are paying their debt service instalments each month at average interest rates of up to 9.8% in some African countries. Just this week, for example, we read a Barclays Bank report that places Senegal with a debt of 119% of its GDP, a figure that, if confirmed, would place this neighbouring country as the most indebted in Africa.
And the Seville Summit has taken some interesting decisions, such as ensuring potential debt moratoriums in cases of humanitarian or environmental catastrophes or wars, some progress towards greater fiscal transparency and the fight against tax havens or the creation of a platform of debtor countries, but, deep down, it pains me to think that, as on other occasions, there is much talk and little real action, that in Seville the world has not been able to find real bold solutions to this asphyxiation.
UN officials say that, given the global context, the outcome of the Summit is encouraging and that what has been signed in Seville is "a launching pad for action and measures to improve livelihoods around the world", in the words of our Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo.
Let us hope that this is indeed the case, and that this summit will truly mark a path towards global decisions such as debt cancellation for the poorest countries, perhaps the only possible way to free up resources for development. I would like to live in a world where solidarity, justice and empathy would drive measures with a comprehensive approach combining debt cancellation with a reform of the international financial system, which would prevent predators from taking advantage of the weakness of developing countries to increase their profit account and the distribution of dividends to a few billionaires.
That, together with the capacity of Africans to mobilise their internal resources, to find the potential of a single African market such as the one being worked on in the African Free Trade Area and to be able to reach their full development potential, giving employment and hope to a young and dynamic population that dreams of prospering in their own countries.
Debt is an issue that continues to hang over developing countries like a noose around their necks. This is an issue that I have been writing about periodically since 2019 (up to five times on debt and a few more on climate finance). Furthermore, beyond words, last March at Casa África we hosted two meetings with public and private, national and international entities and organisations, led by two Spanish government ministries (Economy and Foreign Affairs), which prepared the way for this specific summit and whose previous work was fundamental in terms of advancing proposals and defining objectives.
The year 2025 was declared by the United Nations as the Year of Reparations and this Summit was an important but not fully exploited step to push for a 'reset' of the system in favour of Africa, the continent most affected by historical and economic injustices, slavery and colonialism. If Africa does well, we will all do well, and now the inaction of the developed world is allowing the privileges of a cruel financing system that is unashamedly enriching the richest to continue.
The issue of foreign debt is therefore a central question for African sovereignty and the possibilities of the countries of that continent, which are subjected to unjust and crushing pressure. With its flaws and inconsistencies, the Seville meeting provides, in this respect, a valuable framework for reflection and understanding that we must take advantage of in order to move forward. Let us hope, therefore, that it marks the beginning of a path towards justice.