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Kenyan President William Ruto, along with the heads of two major finance and climate institutions said without a 10 to 20-year grace period for interest payments on foreign debt, Africa will struggle to address the challenges posed by climate change. African nations, burdened with elevated debt levels acquired during the global pandemic to support their citizens and economies, have left the continent paying more in loan servicing charges than it needs to invest in climate resilience projects, Ruto and his co-authors explained in an opinion piece “If You Want Our Countries to Address Climate Change, First Pause Our Debts” featured in The New York Times.
“Countries in the West often plead with us to invest in the kind of ambitious resilience projects we need to survive in a warming world. But in Africa, we can’t fix the climate issue unless we fix the debt issue,” the piece read.
Out of the 52 low- and middle-income nations that have faced debt defaults or been on the brink of it in the past three years, 23 of them are located in Africa.
Due to the increasing interest rates, Africa’s debt payments are set to soar to US$62 billion this year, marking a 35 percent rise from the previous year, 2022. Currently, Africa’s debt servicing costs surpass the annual estimated requirement of US$50 billion, as suggested by the Global Centre on Adaptation, for investing in climate resilience.
Rather than securing financial support to tackle the climate crisis, Africa is obtaining loans at a rate that can be up to eight times higher than what wealthier nations pay for post-climate catastrophe reconstruction.
Ruto co-authored the article with Akinwumi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Chairman of the African Union Commission, and Patrick Verkooijen, the Chief Executive Officer of The Rotterdam-based Global Centre on Adaptation. — Business Insider Africa.
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