Rising Debts With a New Composition

Debt levels soared across advanced, emerging, frontier, and developing economies. Africa was no exception to this trend, as a faster pace of government borrowing from 2010 resulted in much higher government debt levels. The debt landscape also changed, with several events having affected the composition of the debt stocks. The first was the clean slate provided by the long-awaited debt relief from official lenders in the 2000s. The second was the increased borrowing options provided by emerging nations. The third was the broader access of African countries to global capital markets.