During this event, we discussed the African debt landscape with a focus on the effects of increased access to international financial markets, role of credit ratings and the various debt restructuring agreements. The event built on the two policy briefs that were published earlier this year. One policy brief argues that the absence of statutory and human rights-based sovereign debt mechanisms that involve all creditors hinders attempts towards addressing reforms in the architecture of the current African debt profile. The other brief shed light on the drivers and outcomes of the growing activities in Eurobond issuance and sovereign credit ratings in Africa over the last decade.
After the authors, Nora Chirikure and Aurore Sokpoh, presented the papers, a panel discussion about the current African debt landscape was followed. The speakers for the panel were Dr Theophilus Acheampong and Jason Rosario Braganza (Executive Director of AFRODAD). The event was moderated by Chenai Mukumba, a policy researcher and advocacy manager at the Tax Justice Network Africa.
Dr Theophilus Acheampong is an economist and political risk analyst with over ten years’ experience working with governments, private investors and international organizations on natural resource governance and public financial management issues. He has worked as an independent consultant on various projects in the global energy industry, particularly in upstream oil and gas, and in providing economic analysis and market research focused on frontier emerging markets. He is currently co-editing a Palgrave MacMillan book titled “Petroleum Resource Management in Africa: Lessons from Ghana”, which examines the challenges and opportunities from ten years of oil and gas production in Ghana.
Jason Rosario Braganza is a Kenyan Economist with over ten years’ experience working on international development in Africa. Jason has focused his work over the past decade on trade and regional integration; finance for development and tax; illicit financial flows and domestic resource mobilisation; and poverty and inequality. Jason is the Executive Director at The African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD).
Aurore SOKPOH is an economist, researching African agency in international public finance architecture as part of her second Master in Africa and International Development at the University of Edinburgh. She holds a Certificate in Data, Economics, and Development Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a Master’s Degree in Development Economics and a Double Bachelor in Economics and Law, both from the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Nora Chirikure is a research assistant at Africa Policy Research Institute (APRI). Nora holds a B.Sc. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is currently pursuing a M.Sc. in Economics and Management Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Chenai Mukumba is the Policy Research and Advocacy Manager at the Tax Justice Network Africa. She is based in Nairobi Kenya and is responsible for leading the policy unit and coordinating the institution’s research and policy engagement on tax justice issues at regional and global levels. She has held the position since August 2020 and was also recently elected to sit on the board of ATAF’s African Tax in Women Network as the Vice Chair. Chenai has a Masters in International Relations from Wits University, Johannesburg.