There’ve been major developments over the past week in the African debt crisis. It appears that Angola and China reached a consensus on how to restructure the estimated $20 billion of loans that Luanda owes Beijing. This deal then paved the way for the IMF to come in with its own financial package for Angola. Meantime, Zambia announced that it will default on three Eurobond notes totaling around $3 billion, prompting an immediate downgrade of its credit rating.
Finally, it appears that Kenya’s embattled standard gauge railway (SGR) is reaching a breaking point. Kenya Railways is losing almost ten million dollars a month and it looks increasingly likely that the company will not be able to repay the Chinese creditors who financed and built the SGR.
Yinka Adegoke, Africa editor of the online financial news site Quartz, is closely following the unfolding debt crisis in Africa and China’s role in the situation. He joins Eric & Cobus from the Quartz newsroom in New York to discuss the financial crisis and how it’s impacting the broader China-Africa relationship.
Show Notes:
Join Yinka and Eric on October 8th from 9:30am-10:30am EST for a free Quartz online conference: “What China’s Influence in Africa Means for the Global Economy.”
Yinka Adegoke is Africa editor for Quartz where he oversees and coordinates coverage of the news and ideas in partnership with writers across the continent. He has reported from more than 10 countries across Europe, Africa and the Americas. Before joining Quartz, Yinka was deputy editor at Billboard where he ran the business coverage. Prior to that he was Reuters’ senior media correspondent covering the global media business where he focused on the digital disruption of the traditional media industry. He has written for The Financial Times and The Guardian in the UK among others.
