PREVIEW
Kenya's President Ruto seized the Évian stage but the minerals deal may define the summit more than pledges on debt and the cost of the capital
Kenya’s President William Ruto took advantage of South Africa’s enforced absence from the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains to push his credentials as the continent’s leading pan-African spokesman.
Ruto and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el Sisi were the two African leaders invited by host French President Emmanuel Macron. Ruto’s attendance came after a tour of Brussels and Berlin where he repeated his pitch for European investment made during May’s ‘Africa Forward’ summit with Macron in Nairobi (AC Vol 67 No 10, Ruto strengthens hand as Nairobi summit marks Macron’s African swansong).
During discussions on the future of international partnerships, Ruto called on major creditors, including Western nations and China, to support stronger debt restructuring frameworks and fairer access to concessional financing.
That bore some fruit. A joint statement on ‘mutually beneficial international partnerships’ talks about strengthening the global debt architecture and improving debt data transparency. It did not commit to creating new financial instruments or overhauling the G20 Common Framework on debt restructuring.
But the big move in Évian was on critical minerals where leaders agreed as part of a ‘joint alliance’ that no single country should supply more than 60 percent of their imports of rare earths by 2030. Though China is not named in the joint declaration, it accounts for roughly 70% of global rare earth mining and about 90% of processing capacity. That could have implications for African mineral producers.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promoted the bloc’s Global Gateway investment programme as a way for African states to develop their own capacity to process critical minerals and then be able to sell a ‘higher value’ product on to the EU.
That, EU officials say, is how Global Gateway can be a development tool while also promoting the bloc’s strategic interests (AC Vol 67 No 12, Western economies rewrite the finance rules – with strings attached). China currently controls more than 70% of the world’s mineral processing capacity.
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