President Macky Sall's candidacy for the office of UN Secretary-General places development finance among the questions of security. A state that devotes a growing share of its revenue to servicing its debt, at the expense of its schools and its health centres, assembles the conditions of its own instability. Peace is also built inside budgets.
A financial architecture showing its age. The institutions inherited from 1944 answered a world that no longer exists. Many states now borrow at rates unrelated to their real solvency, and reschedule in emergency what they would have invested over time. The Secretariat does not set the rates, but it carries a voice: the one that recalls, case after case, that the debt of a poor country bears on the stability of an entire region.
Prevention costs less than repair. Preventive diplomacy and development finance follow the same arithmetic. A school kept open, a clinic kept stocked, a young person trained each remove part of a crisis's fuel. The great ruptures of the past decade were preceded by economic warnings that no one chose to finance in time.
A voice for the countries that borrow. The vision statement filed with the Organization ranks this financing among its commitments, alongside an impartial institution and a diplomacy of prevention. President Macky Sall intends to make the Secretariat a constant advocate for financing scaled to real needs, in the forums where the terms of debt are decided.
The authority of experience. These proposals come from a record: twelve years as head of state, the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022, and the conduct, on a continent's behalf, of the negotiations opened by the food, health and energy crises. That is why they are framed as obligations rather than intentions.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
The vision statement can be consulted in the official register of candidatures of the United Nations. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net