Browsing: africa documentary

Lamu Port in Kenya. Reports of China angling to seize strategic national assets if loan obligations are defaulted are being denied. www.theexchange.africa

Collateralized debt and Africa’s rise from a crisis

Africa's Development

Some 11 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are currently at high risk of debt distress according to the latest debt sustainability analyses by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

Already, six countries are in debt distress and the debt burden is worsening in the region where the public debt ratio to gross domestic product has surged to 65.6 per cent from 56.4 per cent pre-Covid-19 period. 

A study conducted by the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University shows that there is a trend where African governments are mortgaging their natural resources to secure loans from China. This has often ignited debt distress when commodity prices collapse.

Read: Why do lenders want “COLLATERAL”?

This mortgaging of resource is referred to as collateralized sovereign debt. This is where a sovereign loan is secured by existing assets or future receipts owned by the borrowing government. The collateral could be commodities, future export revenues,

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