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Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera has urged the international community to consider restructuring and possibly writing off African countries’ debts to bilateral and multilateral institutions.
Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera has urged the international community to consider restructuring and possibly writing off African countries’ debts to bilateral and multilateral institutions. Addressing the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, Malawi’s president Lazarus Chakwera said African countries are going through hardships in meeting their debt service obligations.
Africa is trying everything possible to manage its debts, but if one could consider either restructuring or completely writing off some of these debts, Africa would have a ‘breathing space,” Chakwera suggested. According to the World Bank, Africa’s external debt increased from $1.12 trillion in 2022 to $1.152 trillion by the end of 2023.
African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwuni Adesina recently warned at a summit in Washington that “non-transparent” resource-backed loans are undermining Africa’s immense economic potential, complicating debt resolutions, and jeopardizing countries’ future growth.
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According to Adesina, African countries spend 65% of their GDP on servicing external debt. It is time to have debt transparency and accountability and make sure that this whole thing of these opaque natural resource-backed loans ends, because it complicates the debt issue and the resolution issue,” he added.
Lately, the World Bank and the US government have urged Malawi to properly manage its external debt, which currently totals USD 4 billion.
