Taking place on the eve of the Summit on Financing African Economies hosted by President Macron, the Spring Meeting highlighted North-South relations during the pandemic, with a special emphasis on Africa. Vaccine nationalism endangers global immunity and economic recovery and threatens to poison North-South relations on other issues, including climate negotiations. The Spring meeting sessions gathered key global actors such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and public development banks.
Watch the Spring Meeting sessions live
Head to the Paris Peace Forum YouTube channel to watch the recordings of the Spring meeting sessions.
Speakers
The event featured:
- Ambroise Fayolle, EIB Vice-President
- Jutta Urpilainen, European Commissioner for International Partnerships
- Akinwumi A. Adesina, African Development Bank President
- Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization
- Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization
- Bandar M. H. Hajjar, President of the Islamic Development Bank Group
- Melinda French Gates, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
and other top-level speakers. Together, they will explore how advanced economies and developing nations can cooperate on short-term vaccine procurement and long-term recovery – covering vaccine production, debt relief, and sustainable development – and how these mechanisms could be best financed.
