Africa's debt at 30-year low

Yvonne Ike, a London-based executive with JP Morgan-Chase Bank, told a conference session that external debt was now at a 30-year low. The dramatic reduction was due at least in part to the debt relief that had been offered to highly indebted poor countries. Multi-debt relief of $30bn has been offered in the recent past, she said.

Secondly, she said, there was improving debt management in African countries. "We are moving from military autocratic regimes to a more democratic situation," she said. "Even ten years ago a number of countries did not give you a budget."

She said that this meant that now Africa could start to look at how it positioned itself from a debt perspective.

Ike complained that too much short-term funding was used in Africa. "What Africa needs now is a long-term view of its funding structure," she said. And the profile of the two main international partners of sub-Saharan Africa - the US and Britain - was shifting and becoming unclear. This was in contrast to China.

"On the side of Africa," she said, "there is a lack of cohesion in how African countries work together, on their strategic relationship with these countries."

The private sector has only a short term lending perspective in Africa.

"There is not enough stability to look beyond a two- to three-year horizon," she said, adding that the rates that the private sector was prepared to offer to fund Africa's development initiatives were much larger than the Africans were prepared to pay.

She stressed the need for the "mitigant" effects of a legal and regulatory framework, and protested that there were not structures in place to spend the money available without inflation.

- I-Net Bridge