A record was chalked up in 2018 for international bond issues from sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank. On the one hand, this is a good sign. It demonstrates investor appetite for African debt and the region’s increased ability to tap global financial markets and sources of capital.
According to the World Bank’s latest Africa’s Pulse report — a bi-annual look at African economic issues — the median of the continent’s debt-to-GDP ratio by 2012 was down to a manageable 24%. Since then, growth has slowed markedly, while debt has ballooned. By 2018, median public debt as a ratio of GDP had reached 53%. Meanwhile, growth has cooled. The World Bank estimates sub-Saharan growth was 2.3% in 2018, the fourth straight year that the population grew faster than the economy.
Part of the reason has been a failure — with some notable exceptions such as Ethiopia — to diversify meaningfully from an over-reliance on resources. When African growth rates were hot and debt was in decline, the value of exports from the region soared to $420-billion from $100-billion between 2000 and 2011. But that was largely the result of the commodity boom, with much of the underlying consumption fuelling that growth based on the income generated from resource exports.
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