Deputy Minister Bernice Swarts: Heads of State Summit for the 1st Africa Biodiversity Summit

South Africa's intervention at the Heads of State Summit for the 1st Africa Biodiversity Summit, speech delivered by Deputy Minister Bernice Swarts

Madam Chair, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,

Today marks the beginning of the end of an era where Africa's rich natural resources were predestined and pre-routed to specific colonial powers following the Berlin Conference in 1884. It was in this Conference that the colonisers sought to create pseudo borders of ownership, allowing various foreign powers to claim almost the entire African continent and her resources.

Your Excellencies, Africa's combined GDP is conservatively estimated at USD 2.8 trillion, yet it remains the poorest continent in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP). A study by renowned academic and economic anthropologist, Prof Jason Hickel et al., shows that there remains an unequal exchange of economic growth in the "advanced economies," which largely depends on the cheap and large-scale appropriation of resources and labour from the "developing economies." The Hickel study asserts that between 1960 and 2021, the advanced economies extracted natural resources worth over USD 152 trillion in raw material form from developing economies.

The above study is a rude awakening for the African continent, whose average debt-to-GDP ratio is estimated at around 61-64% in 2025, yet is still considered by rating agencies to be a riskier investment platform. Meanwhile, debt-to-GDP ratios of advanced economies range from 59% to over 100%, and yet they are viewed as stable investment environments, qualifying for lower interest repayment rates for their debts.

Your Excellencies, we are at a pivotal moment where biodiversity offers solutions for climate adaptation - where nature is our beacon of hope, and where we must protect ecosystems so that they continue to provide essential services. It is imperative that we build momentum from this Summit to strengthen our resolve for self-sufficiency as a continent. Africa must innovate, industrialise, and participate at all levels of the value chain of her natural resources, while applying economic modalities that support both thriving people and thriving nature.

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