DISINFO: African countries do not receive IMF assistance because it all goes to the Kyiv regime
SUMMARY
A number of the most needy African countries do not receive aid from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, because they direct it to support the Kyiv regime.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative trying to blame Kyiv for the economic disruptions caused by Russia's full-scale invasion on Ukraine with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine.
The claim is also trying to exploit and manipulate sentiments of anti-colonialism and it is should also be seen in the context of the climate negotiations COP29 in Azerbaijan, which Moscow is trying to exploit and fuel up anti-Western tensions.
The claims are manifestly false and misleading. First, because in terms of outstanding credit, which reflects how much countries have borrowed from the IMF, African countries hold more than 38 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDR) in outstanding credit (equal to more than $51 bn). This constitutes more than a third of all IMF outstanding credit. Ukraine's outstanding credit to the IMF is about 10 billion SDR which represents less than a tenth of IMF's total outstanding credit.
Second, the IMF lending capacity stand at about $1 trillion, which is more than 6.5 times its current outstanding credit rendering the argument that assistance to Ukraine is crowding out assistance to Africa completely baseless.
Even if it were true that Ukraine's need for assistance diverts resources that are needed elsewhere, Russia remains the only responsible party for this, as Ukraine's need for assistance is the direct result of Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine starting in 2014 with the illegal annexation of Crimea and then escalating into a full–scale invasion in 2022.
See similar cases that Ukrainian grain went to rich Europeans instead of starving children in Africa, that Western weapons in Ukraine kill mainly civilians and divert funds from Africa, that the West swallowed food from Ukraine like a vacuum cleaner, disregarded the poorest countries, and that the EU is the biggest beneficiary of the 'grain corridor', not the starving countries of Africa.