By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says he is confident the annual G7 summit will yield positive results and afford many countries the financial muscles they need to deal with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He made the remarks on Sunday in the UK where he addressed members of the media after the summit.
“We are pleased to say that the G7 countries have committed quite a lot of support and assistance in the form of making vaccines available and in some cases, allowing exports to go into African countries and indeed other parts of the world,” he said.
Among other issues, he urged leaders to address the substantial financing gap for testing, treatment and vaccination against Covid-19.
He said the leaders had also committed financial support to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator, a global collaboration to ensure equal access to vaccine, which would enable various countries with resources to produce their own vaccines and be self-reliant.
Ramaphosa said he earlier spoke to the CEO of Aspen, the manufacturers of Johnson and Johnson jabs. This after a US ruling said ingredients for the country’s doses may have been contaminated during production in a plant in Baltimore.
As a result, the 2 million doses needed to be disposed of and they have to “start all over again” to manufacture another batch and he received assurance that manufacturing of the vaccines would commence soon.
Ramaphosa added that he met with US President Joe Biden who indicated he would donate vaccines.
“In my discussion with Biden we did say to him, that we would like the doses that he is going to donate to be channelled to Africa and South Africa, and he agreed to do precisely that as soon as possible, so we should be able to get some doses to that end, we will be able to get doses also from Europe.”
Meanwhile G-7 leaders agreed on Sunday to raise their contributions to meet an overdue spending pledge of $100 billion a year to help poorer countries cut carbon emissions and cope with global warming, but campaigners said firm cash promises were missing.
Alongside plans billed as helping speed infrastructure funding in developing countries and a shift to renewable and sustainable technology, the world’s seven largest advanced economies again pledged to meet the climate finance target.
But climate groups said the promise — in a copy of a draft communique seen by Reuters — lacked detail, most importantly a figure for the increases. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said individual nations were expected to set out the size of the increases “in due course.”
There was a clear push by leaders at the G-7 summit in southwestern England try to counter China’s increasing influence in the world, particularly among developing nations.
The leaders signaled their desire to build a rival to Beijing’s multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative but the details were few and far between.
In the draft communique the seven nations — the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — reaffirmed their commitment to “mobilize $100 billion/year from public and private sources, through to 2025.”
“Towards this end, we commit to each increase and improve our overall international public climate finance contributions for this period and call on other developed countries to join and enhance their contributions to this effort.”
The G-7 nations are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.