Category: Loans

While there's widespread concern in Kenya about the country falling prey to a Chinese "debt trap," the reality is that Kenyans should be far more concerned about the consequences of failing to repay private creditors than the small Chinese portion of its national debt. ...

China's Ambassador to Namibia, Zhang Yiming, Tweeted out a summary of Wang Yi's comments related to Africa that the foreign minister shared at a press conference in Beijing on Sunday. While Ambassador Zhang and Foreign Minister Wang appear ...

One of the big questions around the burgeoning debt crisis in Africa is how will China respond? With an estimated $152 billion of outstanding loans on the continent, Beijing is by far the continent's largest bilateral creditor.  No discussion ...

Kenya, and likely many other African countries, is in a bit of a pinch right now: it desperately needs to raise money to close an estimated $7.7 billion budget deficit. But if the Treasury wants to remain qualified for G20 debt relief then it can't go out ...

The global credit rating agency Moody's is becoming increasingly concerned that Kenya will not be able to keep up with the payments on its comparatively expensive loan portfolio. Moody's adjusted Kenya's rating from B2 stable to B2 ...

Ghana's Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta became the first senior-level African official to specifically call on China for help in relieving the spiraling African debt crisis. Until now, African leaders had issued general appeals to the "international community" for debt relief but never mentioned any individual creditors like ...

Namibia's Presidential Spokesman Alfredo Hengari confirmed that President Hage Geingob spoke on the phone with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. President Geingob reportedly communicated his desire for increased Chinese economic engagement in Namibia through “substantial investments, increased grants, and favorable loan assistance," according to ...

Economist David Ndii, one of Kenya's leading political economy thinkers, a popular columnist and a longtime critic of the government's policy of borrowing heavily from China to build infrastructure, conducted a fascinating hour-long interview with Kenyan philosopher Joseph Kabuthi ...

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took the initiative on Tuesday to talk about the proverbial elephant in the room: with Africa's economies spiraling downwards due to the worsening COVID-19 crisis, how are they ever going to be able to pay back all that money they owe ...

Consider that on Thursday, February 20th, the price of a barrel of Angolan Cabinda oil was $62.19. Yesterday, just 26 days later, the price had fallen by almost half to $32.21. Given the fact that this is ...

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 ...

Over the past 15 years, many African countries borrowed tens of billions of dollars from China to build badly-needed infrastructure. Short of cash, these countries instead leverage their natural resources to repay their debts. Ghanaian bauxite, Angolan oil, and Zambian copper, ...