Aysu Bicer
26 June 2022•Update: 26 June 2022
SCHLOSS ELMAU, Germany
US President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that the G7 aims to mobilize $600 billion by 2027 for a global infrastructure program.
"These strategic investments are areas of critical importance to sustainable development, and our shared global stability, health and health security, digital connectivity, gender equality and equity, climate, and energy security," he said in a press conference in the castle of Elmau in the Bavarian Alps.
This new infrastructure initiative aimed at low- and middle-income countries against the Belt and Road Project, China's "modern silk road," the budget of which is expected to reach $10 trillion.
Biden pointed to the infrastructure projects underway in these areas, saying that critical investments would be made in the health sector in order to prepare for future pandemics.
"The US together with the G7 partners and the World Bank, are invested in a new industrial-scale vaccine manufacturing facility in Senegal," he said, adding that when the facility is complete, it would have the potential to produce "hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine annually for COVID-19 and other diseases."
This investment will also enhance global vaccine supplies, he noted.
On digital connectivity, Biden underlined the importance of secure information and communications technologies being available to the public.
"Our economy increasingly depends on people's ability to connect to secure information and communications technologies we need to strengthen the use of trusted technologies," he said.
This program is mobilizing $335 million in private capital to supply secure network equipment in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, he explained.
Pointing out Washington's support for a successful bid by American company SubCom to lay a global subsea telecommunications cable network in a $600 million contract, he said: "This cable will stretch from Southeast Asia through the Middle East, in the Horn of Africa to Europe."
He also underlined that the entire world was feeling the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on energy markets.
"We need worldwide effort to invest in transformative clean energy projects to ensure that critical infrastructure is resilient to changing climate," he said.
Critical materials are necessary for clean energy transition, he noted, saying that, for example, the US government just facilitated a new partnership between two American firms and the government of Angola to invest $2 billion in building new solar projects in the Southern African nation.
