African-led Debate on Infrastructure

Paving the way for the next G20 presidency, which will be held by South Africa, the PUC-Rio campus hosted the “Africa-Led Debate on Infrastructure” event, which discussed the financing gap and the challenges of scale in infrastructure projects aimed at the African continent.

The debate was a side event of the G20 Infrastructure Working Group, and was organized by the Ministry of Finance, with the support of the BRICS Policy Center, the Institute of Institutional Relations and the IAG business school, both at PUC-Rio, as well as the university’s Vice-Rectory.

The event was opened by Jéser Abilio de Souza, coordinator of the G20 Finance Track for the Brazilian Presidency, and welcoming speeches by Antonio Freitas, undersecretary for International Finance and Economic Cooperation at the Brazilian Ministry of Finance, and Isabel Rocha de Siqueira, director of IRI/PUC-Rio.

Mediated by Mariana Davi Ferreira, from the Ministry of Finance’s Secretariat for International Affairs, the speakers highlighted what has been done on the African continent and solutions to problems in the field of infrastructure, such as offering greater financial support from the Multilateral Development Banks and improving access to credit, as well as assessing the positive economic impacts of the proposals in the long term.

Marden Barboza, coordinator of the G20 Infrastructure Working Group, was responsible for the debate’s closing remarks.