Development cooperation

In New York, African leaders spoke mostly about debt and the cost of borrowing. Kenya's President said global public debt had reached $102 trillion. He added that 46 countries spend more on interest than on health and education together. Nigeria's finance minister spoke of a "prejudice premium", an extra cost that African borrowers pay because of how lenders see them. No debt deal or new cheap lending was announced, so Africa's complaint brought no new money.

The European Union (EU) announced €710 million of aid on 26 September. Of this, €380 million is for sub-Saharan Africa and is linked to migration. So the largest new offer of European money to Africa that week was tied to what Europe wants on its borders.

Africa's own work on debt happens elsewhere. African officials discussed a Common African Position on Debt in Harare in July. The African Credit Rating Agency launches in Port Louis, Mauritius, on 7 October. It is hosted by the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the AU body through which governments review each other. It is a year late. The agency will grade governments and companies, with a focus on debt in local currencies. Its grades could matter most for loans raised from African savers at home.

The United States pulled out of the 2025 UN financing conference in Seville, Spain. That conference put the gap in funding for the world's shared development targets for 2030 at $4 trillion. As chair of the G20, the group of large economies, the United States has left debt and development finance off the agenda. South Africa, a G20 member, is not invited to the summit in Miami in December. The forum that oversees debt relief for poor countries will not discuss it this year.

Aid fell 23.1% in 2025 after inflation, the largest fall on record. The United States caused three-quarters of the fall, cutting its own aid by 57%. Germany cut 17% and still became the largest donor for the first time, giving $29.1 billion. France and the United Kingdom each cut about 11%, and Japan cut 6%. Sweden and Norway were the only large donors to give more. Humanitarian aid, which pays for emergency food, shelter and medicine, fell 36%.

Africa lost more than the average. Donor countries' own aid to sub-Saharan Africa fell 26% in 2025, to $24.5 billion. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which keeps the official aid figures, expects a further fall of 11.6% in 2026. It expects aid to the most fragile African states to fall by 38% between 2024 and 2026. Aid to the Sahel may fall by 36%, and aid for health by between 29% and 46%. Shared lenders and funds, such as the World Bank, are not expected to fill the gap. The poorest and least stable countries are losing the most.

Low and middle income countries owed a record $8.9 trillion abroad at the end of 2024. That year they paid $415 billion in interest alone. Between 2022 and 2024 they paid out $741 billion more than they received in new loans. It was the largest gap in at least 50 years. New bonds cost around 10% a year, double the rate before 2020. The World Bank's chief economist, Indermit Gill, warned governments against "rushing back into external debt markets". For many African treasuries, borrowing abroad has become a drain on the budget.

The World Bank's fund for the poorest countries, the International Development Association (IDA), promised $100 billion in its latest round, from $23.7 billion in donor pledges. Forty of the 78 countries that can use it are in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2024 the World Bank put $18.3 billion more into these countries than it took back. The US budget request cut the US pledge to IDA from $4 billion to $3.2 billion. The African Development Fund raised $11 billion in its latest round. Its cheapest money is flat after inflation, and the growth comes from borrowing on markets. So cheap money for Africa's poorest states is not growing.

Governments in sub-Saharan Africa sold $14 billion of Eurobonds in 2025, and $5.5 billion in the first two months of 2026. Chinese lending to Africa fell to $2.1 billion for six projects in 2024, and Angola received $1.45 billion of it. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced $110 billion of African projects between 2019 and 2023, most of it in renewable energy. Saudi Arabia pledged $41 billion for infrastructure in October 2024. Each of these comes at market interest or goes to a small number of large projects.

In 2016, donors promised to send 25% of humanitarian money straight to local and national organisations. In 2025 they sent 4.3%, and the amount reaching these groups fell 27%. As donors pull out, local groups are left to deliver services and carry the risk without flexible money to do it.

In February 2026 Kenya borrowed $2.25 billion abroad, partly to buy back older debt. It pays 8.7% a year on bonds due in 2039 and 7.875% on bonds due in 2034. Côte d'Ivoire raised $1.3 billion for 15 years at 5.39%, so markets price African borrowers very differently. Interest already took 24.3% of Kenya's revenue in 2023. Kenya's health deal with the United States, signed in December 2025, is worth $2.48 billion over five years, and Kenya pays $850 million of it. The High Court suspended the deal within weeks, because its data terms clashed with Kenya's own data protection law.

Ethiopia shows how slow the G20 Common Framework, the process for cutting poor countries' debts, still is. Ethiopia agreed terms with the governments it owes in July 2025. In January 2026 they rejected its deal with private bondholders as too generous to them. A revised deal in June 2026 swaps a $1 billion bond for $880 million at 6.15%, due in 2029. Zambia, Ghana and Chad have mostly finished their cases. In June the Paris Club, a group of creditor governments, said the process must become faster. Even the lenders now accept that countries wait too long for relief.

Senegal is the clearest African failure. Its previous government hid borrowing, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that Senegal had given it false figures. On 1 September 2026, IMF staff agreed a new $2.2 billion loan programme that requires Senegal to correct this. The government says it will ask for its debts to be restructured. The cost of the hidden borrowing now falls on Senegal's budget and its citizens.

Interest took 35.8% of Malawi's revenue in 2024, 28.3% of Zambia's and 25.2% of Angola's. There, over a quarter of what the government collects goes to lenders before any clinic or school is paid for.

Twenty-four African governments pledged $182 million to the African Development Fund, five times their last pledge. They include Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Zambia, South Africa and Ethiopia. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is not among them. Africa's own pledges remain small, but they give African governments a stronger claim to a say in how the fund lends.

The OECD expects sub-Saharan Africa to receive $11.8 billion less aid in 2026 than in 2024. Thirty-two of the region's 49 countries are among the UN's least developed countries, and few of them can borrow cheaply anywhere else. No single source of money can replace grants. Eurobonds carry Africa's high interest rates, and Chinese lending has shrunk to a few projects. Gulf money goes mainly to ports, minerals and energy.

Each new source asks for something grants did not. Health deals ask for data and a rising share of the budget. European money asks for help on migration. Markets ask for high interest. These prices are set one country at a time, often in private. A common African set of terms would let all 54 governments negotiate together. It would cover limits on data, the schedule of what each government pays, and how a country can leave a deal.

The African Credit Rating Agency will be judged by its first grades. If it uses the same evidence as the global agencies and publishes its methods, local investors may use its grades to price loans to governments. If it looks friendly to the governments it grades, markets will ignore it.