Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Category: Debt Cancellation
African Legislators Make Vain Appeal For Debt Cancellation
Legislative leaders from across Africa issued a joint appeal on Tuesday for creditor nations to cancel some of the continent's outstanding debts. The parliamentarians are meeting this week in Abuja for the first-ever gathering of the Conference ...
Financial Mega Firm BlackRock, China Both Blamed For Slowing Zambia’s Debt Restructuring Process
Zambia's burgeoning debt crisis is once again in the spotlight as stakeholders exchange blame over who's responsible for blocking a comprehensive deal to restructure the country's $17.3 billion of external debt. Anti-poverty activists are accusing BlackRock, the $10 trillion asset management ...
In the Pandemic Era, China is No Substitute for the IMF on Debt Restructuring
By James Sundquist In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, 90 countries have approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for some form of economic assistance. As in decades past, a multitude of developing countries appears to need debt relief ...
Uganda Should Borrow Less, Says President
President Yoweri Museveni wants to stop borrowing and would rather finance his government through increased trade and domestic economic activity, according to comments he made this week in an interview with Reuters. "Uganda can do much better without borrowing in my ...
Low-Income Country Debt Now Closing In on a Trillion Dollars, Activists Blame G20 States For Ignoring the Problem
Borrowing among the world's poorest countries jumped 12% last year pushing up the total amount owed to a record $860 billion, according to a new report released on Tuesday by the World Bank. Not surprisingly, World Bank economists ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
Ghana President Akufo-Addo Calls For the Cancellation of All African Debts
Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo issued an urgent call for immediate economic relief, including the total cancellation of all debts owed by African countries, during his address on Tuesday at the Summit on Financing African Economies. Without the ‘fiscal room to breathe,’ Africa could truly become ‘the forgotten continent, ...
China Provides Modest Debt Relief and New Grant to Rwanda
Rwanda's Finance Minister Uzziel Ndagijimana and Chinese ambassador Rao Hongwei announced on Friday that Beijing would forgive $6 million of debt and provide a new $60 million grant to the government in Kigali as part of COVID-19 relief efforts. If the debt forgiveness ...
NGO: The UK, Not China is the Biggest Obstacle To Zambian Debt Relief
The next stage of the Zambian debt default crisis may play out in a London court. NGOs like Oxfam and the Jubilee Debt Campaign contend that because the vast majority of Eurobonds are covered by English law, ...
In a Mostly Symbolic Move, China Relieves Botswana of Its Interest-Free Debt
Chinese ambassador to Botswana, Zhao Yanbo, announced yesterday on Twitter that he had signed an agreement with Botswana's finance minister, Thapelo Matsheka, to exempt a portion of the southern African country's debts so it could allocate more resources to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. ...
Here’s What the G20 Says DSSI Has Accomplished So Far
When the G20 says it has provided $14 billion of "estimated total immediate liquidity provided by official bilateral creditors in 2020 alone," consider that amount is spread across all regions around the world. It falls far short of calls by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy ...