African leaders used the second day of a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday to push for easier access to credit that could help fund major investments and boost economic growth.

A years-long campaign by African governments for reforms ​to reduce their borrowing costs got a boost on Monday when Macron said he supported creating ​a first-loss guarantee mechanism to de-risk investments on the continent and would lobby for the ⁠idea at the G7 summit next month.

“The issue … is not liquidity. It is risk architecture,” Kenyan President William Ruto ​said in remarks to the Africa Forward Summit in his country’s capital Nairobi on Tuesday.

At Macron’s invitation, Ruto will attend the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France and hopes to build momentum this week for proposals he can take there.

More than 30 African government leaders ​as well as heads of multilateral financial institutions and business executives from across Africa and France are attending ​the Nairobi summit, the first France has held in an English-speaking country.

AFRICAN COUNTRIES WANT REFORMS TO HOW CREDIT RISK IS ASSESSED

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted that African countries face borrowing costs that are twice as high on average as advanced industrialized economies.

“That is not a ​market verdict on Africa. ​It is a verdict ⁠on the injustices of the system,” he told the summit.

Decrying what they say are biases against them that overstate the continent’s risk, African governments have called for changes ​to the methodologies used by credit ratings agencies.

Major agencies including S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s ​and Fitch reject ⁠accusations of regional bias, saying their ratings are based on globally applied, publicly disclosed criteria.

Macron’s proposal of a first-loss guarantee mechanism would help boost capital flows into Africa. It is part of a broader push to mobilize private capital ⁠for African ​nations as rich governments cut back on development financing in favor ​of defense and other domestic priorities.

While other G7 nations have voiced support for making global financial institutions more responsive to African needs, the ​level of support for specific proposals is unclear.

Source: by Duncan Miriri, Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Alexandra Hudson / REUTERS