Africa’s conversations about public debt are no longer confined to technocratic back-rooms in Washington or Paris. They now unfold in African capitals where heads of state, international financiers and civil-society actors debate, in full view, the terms on which the continent will pursue the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. This week’s twin assemblies in Lomé and Abidjan illustrate the change. At the former, the African Union Debt Conference sought to reconcile divergent national interests into a single Lomé Declaration on debt management. At the latter, corporate chiefs and investors considered whether a recalibrated partnership between state and business could marshal the capital required for industrialisation, energy transition and digital transformation. Although the two gatherings differed in constituency and optics, their agendas overlapped: both interrogated the adequacy of the current global financial order and the urgency of mobilising African agency within it.
Context: The Lomé Debt Summit
The Lomé Debt Conference opened on 12 May 2025 under the patronage of President Faure Gnassingbé of Togo. More than five hundred delegates—among them heads of state such as Ghana’s John Dramani Mahama, finance ministers, central-bank governors and representatives of civil society—assembled to exchange experiences and to draft principles that might anchor a continental approach to debt sustainability. In his keynote, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Executive Secretary Claver Gatete characterised Africa’s predicament as “not merely a debt crisis but a development crisis”, setting out five imperatives: reframing debt as a development tool; deepening transparency; reforming the global architecture; scaling innovative, climate-aligned financing; and strengthening domestic resource mobilisation. The conference was structured to deliver, by its close on 14 May, a Lomé Declaration endowed with political weight sufficient to guide negotiations at forthcoming G20, IMF and UN fora. Draft language circulating on the second day called for binding commitments on timely creditor coordination, acceleration of the Common Framework, and the establishment of an African credit-rating agency to counter perceived biases in existing agencies.
Abidjan’s ‘New Deal’ and the Private Sector
One hour west of Lomé, the Palais des Congrès in Abidjan hosted two thousand delegates for the annual Africa CEO Forum. Now in its twelfth edition and co-organised by Jeune Afrique Media Group and the International Finance Corporation, the summit adopted the deliberately provocative slogan “It’s Time to Strike a New Deal”. Panels examined modalities through which private capital might complement, or substitute for, constrained public borrowing. Speakers included South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and the newly inaugurated Senegalese leader Bassirou Diomaye Faye, as well as executives from Afreximbank, Huawei, Visa and Dangote. They debated regional value chains, blended finance and the governance reforms needed to crowd-in long-term investment. The organisers underscored the breadth of participation—seventy-three countries, three hundred and fifty governmental actors and more than six hundred women leaders—evidence, they argued, of a maturing African corporate elite ready to co-author development strategies.
Historical Trajectories of African Sovereign Debt
Africa’s current debt stock, estimated by the IMF at roughly USD 1.8 trillion or sixty-five per cent of continental GDP, results from successive waves of borrowing since the commodity boom of the early 2000s. The Jubilee cancellations of that decade provided temporary relief but also induced complacency. A decade of low global interest rates encouraged Eurobond issuance; the share of private creditors in African external debt rose from eleven per cent in 2005 to forty per cent by 2024. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, fiscal space evaporated, commodity prices gyrated and currencies depreciated. The G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative and its sequel, the Common Framework, stemmed immediate liquidity pressures but failed to deliver comprehensive restructuring, as evidenced by the protracted negotiations of Zambia, Ghana and Ethiopia.
Fragmented Creditor Landscape and Multilateral Dynamics
Creditors themselves are fragmented. In addition to the traditional Paris Club and multilateral institutions, two relatively new Africa-based “baby multilaterals”—Afreximbank and the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank—assert preferred-creditor status, complicating burden-sharing. Paris Club officials insist that their exposures must be restructured on comparable terms, while the African lenders warn that haircuts could impair their counter-cyclical role. UNDP analysts and former African heads of state have cautioned that without a predictable methodology to integrate such actors, future debt workouts risk degenerating into ad hoc diplomacy, prolonging defaults and depressing investment. The Lomé conference devoted an entire plenary to this matter, exploring options ranging from voluntary contribution mechanisms to a continent-wide sovereign debt fund that could purchase and restructure obligations, modelled loosely on the Caribbean Regional Government Securities Market.
Sovereign Sustainability and Domestic Resource Mobilisation
Speakers in both Lomé and Abidjan converged on the necessity of domestic resource mobilisation. UNECA presented data indicating that the continent loses up to USD 90 billion annually in illicit financial flows. If even half of that sum were recouped, several heavily indebted states could meet service obligations without fresh external borrowing. Ghana’s President Mahama described tax digitisation and the expansion of a VAT net as “the single most effective response to the debt crisis at home”, while Nigerian panellists in Abidjan argued for reformed royalty regimes in the extractive sector. The Africa CEO Forum featured case studies of telecom operators securitising mobile-money revenues, and agribusinesses issuing sustainability-linked bonds denominated in local currency, thereby reducing exchange-rate risk.
Private Capital, Blended Finance and Market Innovation
The revival of private-sector confidence is not, however, automatic. Institutional investors still rank sovereign risk above investment-grade thresholds for the majority of African issuers. In Abidjan, executives from Bank of America and Africa50 argued that development finance institutions must assume first-loss positions in greenfield infrastructure, thereby mobilising the USD 100 trillion of assets managed by pensions and insurers in OECD countries. Jamie Dimon’s announcement last year of JPMorgan’s expansion into Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire underscored the latent appetite, but bankers privately acknowledged that untransparent debt registers and uncertain restructuring frameworks elevate due-diligence costs. Participants therefore examined instruments such as sustainability-linked Eurobonds whose coupons step up if ESG targets are missed, and contingent debt clauses that suspend payments after climate shocks. UNECA and the AfDB announced a technical task-force to draft a model legal template by the third quarter of 2025.
Geopolitical Undercurrents
Geopolitics casts a long shadow over these technical debates. An internal United Nations draft negotiating text for the forthcoming Financing for Development conference in Seville, leaked last week, details efforts by the United States delegation to excise references to climate and gender commitments, prompting African negotiators to seek alternative coalitions with the European Union and emerging creditors. Observers warn that without buy-in from major shareholders of the Bretton Woods Institutions, reform initiatives emanating from Lomé could stall. China, once an aggressive bilateral lender, has slowed its African loan commitments from USD 28 billion in 2016 to an estimated USD 7 billion in 2024, preferring equity stakes in strategic minerals. At the same time, Gulf sovereign funds have increased their exposure to African infrastructure, a trend reflected in Qatar Investment Authority’s co-sponsorship of panels in Abidjan. Thus African policymakers must navigate a multipolar creditor environment while maintaining coherence in debt negotiations.
Toward a Lomé Declaration: Process and Substance
Negotiations in Lomé progressed in a spirit of cautious optimism. By the evening of the second day, delegates had agreed on seven operative paragraphs. These include a commitment to publish comprehensive debt data biannually, to align borrowing with Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, and to advocate jointly for an accelerated allocation and channelling of Special Drawing Rights through the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust. Crucially, the draft invokes Article 19 of the AU Constitutive Act, signalling that any member state undertaking restructuring should do so in consultation with a continental oversight mechanism yet to be designed. This clause aims to minimise free-rider dynamics whereby concessions secured by one debtor create moral hazard for others. Observers consider the Lomé Declaration a stepping-stone towards a formal AU Protocol on Debt Governance, analogous to the Malabo Protocol on peace and security.
Comparative Case Studies in Recent Restructurings
Lessons from recent restructurings illuminate both the promise and the limitations of existing mechanisms. Zambia, the first sovereign to default in the pandemic era, secured an agreement in principle with bilateral creditors in 2024, but private bondholders remained at an impasse for fifteen months thereafter owing to disagreements over the treatment of the so-called “baby multilaterals”. In the interim, inflation accelerated from nine to fifteen per cent, undermining poverty-reduction targets. Ghana, by contrast, pursued a voluntary domestic debt exchange that achieved a fifty-five per cent participation rate, yet coupon reductions imposed fiscal tightening on pension funds. Ethiopia’s negotiations, now in their final stages, illustrate how political considerations—conflict in Tigray and humanitarian assistance conditionalities—can blur the lines between economic and security agendas. These cases demonstrate the salience of time: the longer restructurings persist, the greater the macroeconomic scarring.
The Climate Finance Nexus
Climate finance featured prominently in both gatherings. Africa’s share of global greenhouse-gas emissions hovers below four per cent, yet the continent shoulders a disproportionate burden of adaptation costs, estimated by United Nations analyses at between USD 30 and 50 billion annually throughout the present decade.
ONU
Delegates in Lomé argued that debt instruments linked to climate outcomes could align national mitigation commitments with fiscal sustainability. Kenya’s recent USD 2 billion green bond, oversubscribed threefold, was cited as evidence that markets will reward credible policy frameworks. However, the majority of African issuers still face a “greenium”—that is, their sustainable instruments price dearer, rather than cheaper, than vanilla debt, partly because investors demand additional disclosures and verification. UNECA and the AfDB announced plans to establish a continent-wide Climate Finance Observatory to harmonise taxonomies and lower issuance costs.
Institutional Capacity, Data Transparency and Governance
Underlying every discussion was the theme of data integrity. Delegates agreed that opaque debt trajectories erode investor confidence and can inflate yields by as much as 150 basis points. UNECA’s Executive Secretary observed that fewer than half of African states publish quarterly debt bulletins; even fewer reconcile figures with central-bank statistics on contingent liabilities. An AU working group, formed in the margins of the conference, will pilot a digital Debt Transparency Portal utilising distributed-ledger technology so that investors, civil society and oversight bodies can interrogate debt stocks in real time. Complementarily, the Africa CEO Forum announced a partnership with four audit firms to develop an index that rates corporate disclosures on environmental, social and governance metrics, the intention being to foster convergence between sovereign and corporate reporting.
Human Development Implications
Several interlocutors drew attention to the human dimension often effaced in macroeconomic discourse. For civil-society organisations, the burden of debt crystallises in classrooms without textbooks and clinics without medicines. The West African network ‘Tax Justice Network Africa’ presented qualitative research showing that, in Ghana and Nigeria, capital expenditure on rural health has declined by a cumulative twenty-seven per cent since 2020 as interest payments crowded out social spending. A youth delegate from Sierra Leone warned that demographic pressures—an additional thirty million African youths entering the labour market annually—will convert fiscal stress into social unrest unless opportunity is created. Addressing the closing panel in Abidjan, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina framed the challenge succinctly: “There is no fiscal space if we have no political space, and we have no political space if we cannot offer jobs.”
Legal Architecture and Debt-Climate Linkages
International law specialists at Lomé proposed embedding debt-climate swaps within a treaty framework that would prevent hold-out litigation in foreign jurisdictions. Drawing lessons from Belize’s 2021 blue bond and Peru’s debt-for-nature swap with Germany, they suggested that African states jointly petition the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on whether the right to sustainable development imposes obligations on creditors to restructure debt impaired by climate disasters. Although some found the proposal radical, diplomats noted that such an opinion could strengthen Africa’s bargaining hand in sovereign forums.
Domestic Debt Markets: Diversity and Risk
Closer examination of domestic debt markets reveals heterogeneity often obscured by aggregate statistics. Nigeria’s domestic bonds, accounting for sixty-one per cent of its total public debt, are held predominantly by resident banks; this internalisation mitigates foreign-exchange risk but heightens the feedback loop between banking stability and fiscal solvency. Kenya, by contrast, relies extensively on external concessional loans, making it vulnerable to exchange-rate pass-through. South Africa, the continent’s most liquid market, enjoys average maturities of fourteen years, yet it faces risk-premium surges whenever Eskom’s balance sheet deteriorates. In Abidjan, panellists recommended that national treasuries issue longer-dated domestic instruments linked to inflation to create benchmark curves that could anchor corporate issuance.
Digital Transformation and Infrastructure Gaps
Participants also deliberated technological enablers. Blockchain-enabled registries, central-bank digital currencies and artificial-intelligence-assisted risk assessment were showcased in demo sessions. The Central Bank of Nigeria presented early results from its e-Naira pilot, indicating a twelve per cent reduction in payment-system costs. Yet digitalisation is no panacea; delegates cautioned that unless cybersecurity frameworks keep pace, tokenised securities could introduce systemic vulnerabilities. Moreover, the digital divide remains acute: according to IFC research, Africa hosts less than one per cent of global data-centre capacity. Investment in digital infrastructure was therefore portrayed as integral to debt sustainability, because growth in the digital economy can broaden the tax base and create high-value employment.
Narrative and Perception in Global Markets
A recurring motif was narrative. African officials decried the “single story of debt distress” that dominates Western media. Journalists covering the Lomé summit noted that the very framing of discussions—as a collective search for solutions rather than a supplication for relief—marked a subtle yet meaningful shift. Similarly, the Africa CEO Forum deliberately positioned its agenda in terms of opportunity and agency. In the closing communiqué, delegates vowed to produce by September 2025 a joint white paper titled “African Capital in the Global Markets: A Story of Convergence”, which will articulate metrics and case studies to reframe investor perceptions.
Implementation and Capacity-Building Imperatives
Implementing the resolutions of Lomé and the aspirations of Abidjan will demand administrative capacity that is unevenly distributed across the continent. Many debt-management offices operate with antiquated software and skeletal staffing. UNECA announced an initiative, funded by the AfDB and supported by the European Commission, to second fifty specialists in debt analytics, sustainable-bond structuring and legal drafting to fifteen least-developed countries over the next two years. The African Legal Support Facility confirmed that it will provide model contracts and pro-bono counsel for countries negotiating complex instruments such as state-contingent debt and public-private partnerships. Ultimately, capacity building is the hinge on which all other reforms turn; without it, declarations risk remaining rhetorical flourishes. Diplomats in Lomé repeatedly invoked the Swahili proverb “Haba na haba hujaza kibaba”—little by little fills the measure—to stress that institutional strengthening, though incremental, yields compounding dividends.
Africa’s debt debate has entered a new phase. The Lomé and Abidjan meetings demonstrate that the continent is no longer content to be a venue for externally choreographed conversations. Instead, diverse African actors articulate visions that, while distinct, converge on the demand for equitable treatment in the global financial system and for a recalibrated partnership with private capital. Whether these ambitions translate into improved livelihoods depends on political resolve, regulatory agility and the willingness of international partners to refine the rules of engagement. If the Lomé Declaration attains legal force and the ‘New Deal’ ethos of Abidjan crystallises into bankable projects, 2025 may be remembered as the year in which Africa began to write the next chapter of its debt story on its own terms. While inevitable frictions remain, the disciplined pragmatism on display in Lomé and the entrepreneurial energy evident in Abidjan suggest that Africa’s debt discourse is maturing from a narrative of crisis to a narrative of collective bargaining power.
The success of this agenda will hinge not only on creditor goodwill, but on the persistence with which African governments implement the reforms they have set themselves. In that sense, the true verdict on the week’s events will be rendered not by communiqués but by the bond spreads, employment figures and emission trajectories recorded in the years ahead.
