LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) - Africa needs quicker debt

restructurings, more favourable lending terms and some $25

billion for the Africa Development Fund to avoid a lost decade,

the head of its development bank said.

The continent was suffering from "long fiscal COVID" and the

world was not doing enough to help it move past the punishing

years of the pandemic and global interest rate hikes, which had

tipped several countries into default, said Akin Adesina.

"The G20 Common Framework, which is the bilateral and

multilateral path to do (debt restructuring), must work faster

for Africa," Adesina said in a speech on Friday at London's

Chatham House, adding: "We can't afford to have a lost decade."

Adesina also called for a $25 billion replenishment of the

African Development Fund, the concessional arm of the African

Development Bank that lends to vulnerable countries.

In the last replenishment committed $8.9 billion for the

2023 to 2025 financing cycle, the largest in its history.

Zambia this week became the first country to finalise a debt

rework under the Common Framework - the format developed by the

G20 to help poor countries renegotiate unsustainable debt with

all creditors - including China, which substantially expanded

its loans to the developing world in the past decade.

But Zambia's process took nearly four painful years, which

its leaders and others have said was too long.

Ghana and Ethiopia are also both in default and Adesina said

22 African countries are at high risk of debt distress,

forecasting that debt servicing payments will hit $74 billion

this year, up from $17 billion in 2010.

"This is because concessional financing has declined," he

said, adding: "You can't do development at commercial rates. We

have to make sure that the global financing system delivers more

for Africa and avoid economic divergences that are coming about

because of slow economic recovery in Africa from COVID."

Adesina later told Reuters that the Common Framework needed

to include speedier constitution of credit committees, and also

said the Paris Club - the traditional group of mainly Western

creditor governments - needed to be permanently expanded.

"The Paris Club was all about concessional lenders. But the

world has changed," he said, adding that expanding it was

important "because it will allow you to reach a faster dialogue

and a resolution".

In 2010, 57% of Africa's debt was from concessional

financing, now it is around 25% while the proportion from other

commercial lenders and bonds have risen from 17% to 55%.