Building on comments from earlier in May, when Macron hosted African leaders and the heads of multilateral lenders to find ways of financing African economies hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss handling the continent's billions of dollars debt; the French President had an interesting suggestion for how to fund the bailout.

"The peculiarity of Africa is that it does not have the financial means today to protect and revive its economy like all the other continents have done," French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told RFI radio in May.

World finance chiefs agreed in April to boost reserves (SDR)at the International Monetary Fund by $650 billion and extend a debt-servicing freeze to help developing countries deal with the pandemic, although only $34 billion will be allocated to Africa.