Ruto decries ‘unfair’ debt policies, Kerry blows hot and cold on climate reparations

President William Ruto has decried what he termed as an “unfair” framework in the administration of the global financial system, saying the global West continues to disenfranchise Africans by imposing unjust debt repayment policies that are almost unmanageable.

Speaking at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi yesterday in a speech to delegates at the ongoing Africa Climate Summit, Dr Ruto waded into the often murky terrain of foreign debt to African nations, saying that a conversation on the punitive policies of the West and its institutions towards Africa “is not an unfair” debate.

His remarks were received with applause from the thousands, including African heads of states, who were gathered at the Tsavo amphitheatre on the second day of the Africa Climate Summit. In attendance, too, were leaders from the global North, among them the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres, and the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Mr John Kerry.

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Dr Ruto appeared pained in his remarks, cutting his written speech for a few minutes to embark on a short anecdote about how Africa has been hurt by the unfair debt programmes of the West, and how climate change is exacerbating an already bad situation.

While Africa’s debt debate has become a touchy issue in recent years, it is becoming even louder in the wake of the debilitating effects of climate change.

Spend fortunes

African governments are routinely being forced to spend fortunes of small budgets to fund adaptation projects, and Dr Ruto said yesterday the government had been forced to add an additional three million pupils to the national feeding programme, up from one million last year. The holes they burn in their treasuries are often plugged using expensive domestic and foreign borrowing, and African leaders have in recent years decried what they deem as exploitative policies by Western financiers.

“This is the continent with the highest investment potential,” said President Ruto, who went ahead to note that the high potential is hampered by “high interest rates for development capital. As a result, he added, nine countries in Africa are already in debt distress, 13 are at high risk and 17 are at medium risk, and that the African continent is bearing the brunt of the global climate crisis because an unjust financial architecture views African nations as risky borrowers.

“How do we get Africa to pay five times more (than the rest)?” the President wondered. “We are not asking to be favoured or treated differently; we just need a conversation.”

In February this year, Mr Guterres, speaking at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the opening of this year’s African Union Summit, lamented that African countries were routinely being denied much-needed debt relief, and warned that a systemic lack of financial support was putting the African continent in a very difficult situation.

He noted that “a dysfunctional and unfair global financial system” is denying many African countries the debt relief and concessional financing they need” , and that “systems and structures, from health and education to social protection, job-creation and gender equality are starved of investment for lack of support”.

Yesterday, speaking on the same subject, but perhaps with less diplomatic angling, President Ruto received acclaim from the gathering at KICC, and when Mr Kerry stood up to speak, he termed the President’s speech as “an extremely powerful presentation”.

“President Ruto is showing the path for everyone else to follow,” said Mr Kerry, noting that in such summits “words come easy” but action takes longer.

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“Humanity is threatened by humanity,” said Mr Kerry, pointing to the fact that the planet’s climatic woes are as a result of the activities of its human inhabitants, or what scientists have call the Anthropocene era.

But, still lauding President Ruto, Mr Kerry went on: “Your leadership is palpable. You have set a clear path for us. Africa is meeting. Africa is talking. Africa is deciding.”

This week’s meeting is expected to come up with a Nairobi Declaration, a document that will highlight Africa’s united voice in the global climate arena, and which could dominate the African agenda in New York during the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly this month, and later in Dubai during the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28.

Using his now famous “mambo ni matatu” phrase, Dr Ruto said the route to a common climatic prosperity must bring everyone on board, and be built upon the three essential pillars of speed, scale and accountability.

“Every step of this journey will require partnerships that facilitate collaboration and multilateral collective action to achieve just development financing mechanisms, deliver equitable access to markets for Africa’s green products and services, and a just regime that provides liquidity, debt relief and affordable investment capital everywhere on our continent,” said the President. “We are all connected by our common humanity and a shared stake in the vitality and liveability of our planet. We are also bound firmly by the fact that Earth is all we have, that we have no other home, and no alternative planet to resort to when things burn here.”

Mr Kerry hailed Kenya’s fast growth in renewable energy and its transition to clean options, and noted that Nairobi stands a good chance of attracting massive investments if it continues to take leadership of regional greening programmes.

“It is clear that President William Ruto’s push for renewable energy will be a proving and testing ground in the next few years of his administration,” said Mr Kerry.

But, pressed by the Nation about America’s responsibility in the loss and damage debate and whether Washington would be willing to pay Africans for the damage its industrial pollution has wrought on the continent, Mr Kerry said the US “will be damned” to pay any form of climate reparations to developing countries.

While the US remains one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters in the world, Mr Kerry reiterated the remarks of a statement he made in July this year at a Congress hearing, that under no circumstance would Washington be pinned down to pay for climate reparations, and that while he knows the US is among the biggest polluters, all global economies suffer the same predicament when it comes to climate change.

Earlier, during his speech to heads of state at the plenary, Mr Kerry had noted that the loss and damage process should be concluded in about a year, noting that America sympathised with the people affected by climate-related losses and damages.

But he appeared to deviate from that position when, while responding to a Nation enquiry, he said that his stance on paying for loss and damage, which is a form of climate reparation, is that the facility agreed on during UN climate talks in Egypt last year should not be designed in a “punitive” manner, and that the facility should be exempted from any kind of civil liability that developed countries have to pay for.

Liability structure

“This is not a unique position for the United States and many nations in the world,” he said. “We have said that we are not going to create a liability structure that changes the dynamics and everything that the US is doing in a very negative way.”

“We will not do that,” he reiterated.

Mr Kerry said that the US believes that there are losses and damages, and that it is an important thing for responsible nations to try and help countries that have been impacted.

“Since 1988, the United States and other countries have taken enormous steps to respond to that reality. Mother nature doesn’t choose between one country’s emissions and those from another country. What affects mother nature are the total emissions that happen to the atmosphere,” he said.

He, however, stated that the US is proudly the largest humanitarian donor country in the world that has helped so many countries not only during climate emergencies, but also in the health sphere.

He said the US would spend $3 billion a year to realise the commitments made by President Joe Biden on adaptation, subject to Congressional approval.

“President Biden is committed to helping African countries hard hit by the climate crisis and with one year before his presidency comes to an end, he has added one billion dollars to kick-start the African support programme,” said Mr Kerry.

At the same time, he announced that the Biden administration is working on an energy transition accelerator which will focus on the carbon market mechanism which “will only be credited if the countries have fossil fuel reduction plans and transition to renewables”.

Earlier at the conference, President Ruto had suggested that African countries needed to adopt a carbon tax, which is a penalty given to businesses for their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is clear that as a result of procrastination and doing what we shouldn’t have done, more and more damage and injury is taking place. You have to be pretty blind not to recognise certain responsibilities,” Dr Ruto had warned. “The US President and his administration have not yet embraced any carbon pricing mechanisms, but has directed us to examine those that are most prominent and most possible and think about what the arguments are.”

Mr Kerry said that he personally supports and agrees with President Ruto’s idea on carbon pricing, reiterating his earlier statement on Monday that Africa needs to develop and nurture a robust carbon trading market if it is to start looking at the climate catastrophe as an opportunity rather than a disaster.

Dr Ruto called the Nairobi gathering “both Africa’s Climate Summit and a global pre-COP28 convention”, noting that “Africa is meeting, Africans are talking, and the world is listening”.

“We must use this opportunity to lead the world in a new direction towards a future that holds immense promise for both Africa and the entire world. The many initiatives showcased at this Summit testify to the courage of African entrepreneurs and innovators to pursue breakthroughs, exploit opportunities, develop models and take risks to make our tomorrow better than our today,” he said.

Pointing to the much-awaited Nairobi Declaration, he said the contents of the document should encourage everyone “to keep their promises, even in hard times, as a matter of justice, to hold each other to account”.

Additional reporting by Francis Mureithi in Nairobi