Africa and Europe: A time for Action.

As African and European leaders gather for a crucial EU AU summit in Brussels, Africans are gripped by both a sense of hopeful anticipation - and a sense of fatigued apprehension.

Hope because the summit is about Financing for Recovery, and adequate sustainable finance for recovery is exactly what is needed. Apprehension, because too many summits have happened with too little impact in the last few years, and too few leaders north or south of the Mediterranean have grasped the huge challenges - but also even larger opportunities - that lie before us now in this extraordinary historic moment.

In a few decades Africa's youth will be some six times as large as Europe's. Our youthful creativity, dynamism and problem solving will be essential to a host of challenges Europe is facing today and will increasingly face in the future.

How do we partner to fight climate change and promote democracy? How do we partner to ensure health systems are delivering health security for all regions' citizens? How might Africa's dynamic diaspora help be a key part of powering Europe's own dynamism? How do we rally common efforts to fight illicit financial flows?

Europeans and Africans agree - globally we need an average 2-3% more of global GDP invested in sustainable infrastructure to avert a climate catastrophe and deliver a jobs-rich inclusive growth. For African countries the investment need is proportionally more because financing for our recoveries has so far been virtually non-existent, our youth have huge aspirations, and our starting point is from a far lower investment and per capita income point.

Today, there is a dangerous and dynamic divergence in our recovery rates - vaccines rates are pulling us apart, the differential in access to fiscal stimulus widening the recovery gap; and the quantitative easing now underway in the US and Europe coupled with inflation pressures are crippling our economies. All this is increasing global inequality, and as we are already witnessing fuelling conflict as citizens demand more from their leaders.

The response in Brussels to these pressures must be different. We need trillions more invested in a new mutually beneficial growth story, a new and inclusive green-jobs-rich growth vision. The African Union Green Recovery Action Plan combined with the African Continental Free Trade Area provide the framework for this recovery and reset plan. African leaders in Ethiopia in February pledged to accelerate implementation of...