In this short piece, I will use statistical data extracted from the World Bank’s online database. The figures I will use here are for Africa as a whole, i.e. sub-Saharan Africa (the one most often referred to when talking about “African” debt) and North Africa. Figures are for the year 2021. These are averages for the whole continent and do not consider the great diversity of situations. This choice is imposed on me by the propaganda of both sides, for whom nuanced thinking is not a virtue.
In 2021, the debt owed to private creditors (not “Western” private creditors) is equal to
