The cost of borrowing money for a number of African governments is skyrocketing amid the worsening global economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak and the implosion of the OPEC+ alliance.

Under normal circumstances, investors, particularly those in the Eurobond market, saw African commodity sales as a kind of insurance policy that would offset the risk of investing in less dependable frontier markets. Now with the price of oil, copper and other African raw materials hitting multi-year lows, those investors are now demanding much higher returns and pushing up interest rates on new debt… by a lot!