The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, says Africa is “a source of hope” for the world, highlighting the examples of the African Continental Free Trade Area and the decade of financial and economic inclusion for African women.

Mr Guterres also said that in the last 20 years, the African Union (AU) “has helped to bring this hope to life, in order to enable the continent to realize its enormous potentials.”

The UN chief said this in his address to the 35th Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the AU in Addis Ababa on Saturday via video message.

Represented in the Ethiopian capital by Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, the UN chief said the collaboration between the UN and AU “is stronger than ever”, with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063, Africa’s blueprint for a peaceful, integrated and more prosperous continent, as the central pillars.

The secretary-general argued that “injustice is deeply embedded in global systems”, but it was the Africans who “are paying the heaviest price.”

He remembered that the vaccination rate in high-income countries was seven times higher than in Africa and stated that “a morally bankrupt global financial system has abandoned the countries of the South.”

“The unethical inequalities that suffocates Africa, fuel armed conflict, political, economic, ethnic and social tensions, human rights abuses, violence against women, terrorism, military coups and a sentiment of impunity,” he said.

Because of that, Mr Guterres said, tens of millions of people are displaced across the continent and the democratic institutions are in peril.

(NAN)