When Pope Francis addressed a Vatican conference on “the Debt Crisis in the Global South” in June, he pulled no punches in decrying a problem that he blames for “causing misery and distress, and depriving millions of people of the possibility of a dignified future.” To unburden beleaguered countries, the Pope advocated debt forgiveness in the pursuit of “a new international financial architecture that is bold and creative.”

Pope Francis is not alone in his alarm. A recent Finance for Development Lab report on rising debt in developing countries warns of “catastrophic implications for the world” if the current situation is not arrested.

Nor is the alarm unfounded. African countries’ total external debt, totaled at more than $1.152 trillion by the end of last year, continues to spiral. Not only are more African countries borrowing more, they are drawing credit from more foreign (including private) sources, and using more of their meager internal revenues to service interest on existing loans. According to the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), African countries “will pay out $163 billion just to service debts in 2024, up sharply from $61 billion in 2010.”    

But how did these countries arrive at this unfortunate situation? If those warning against the dangers of not helping African countries “deal with their liquidity challenges” are to be believed, African countries are victims of a global financial system which lumbers them with mountains of debt on opaque terms, at unsustainably high interest rates, and for the prosecution of dubious development projects. In this reading, the “debt crisis” is something that “afflicts” poor African countries, not something that, through their own conscious agency, they have somehow taken on.

While the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were once invoked as exemplars of this nefarious external agency, they have since been displaced by China, the top bilateral lender for many African countries, having shelled out a total of $182.28 billion between 2000 and 2023. Among other things, China is accused of offering unfavorable (i.e., to its borrowers) loan conditions, lending more monies than the borrowing countries can pay back, hence partly culpable for their bad decisions, and refusing to offer debt relief when, invariably, the borrowing countries find themselves in distress.

Although these critics obviously mean well, it takes no special powers of discernment to see the flaws, never mind the condescension, in their argument.

First is the assumption that debt is the problem for African countries (hence the “debt crisis”), rather than the symptom that it most clearly is. This explains the corollary assumption that but for the so-called debt overhang, African countries would be massively investing in education, health, and physical infrastructure, forgetting that the failure to get its priorities in order in the first place is the reason why Africa has become a continent of chronic borrowers. It is interesting to recall that the same people who now complain about African countries being saddled with debt and passionately advocate debt forgiveness are the same people who once argued that extending generous lines of credit to them was their surest path to development.

If the suggestion that African countries are being saddled with debt smacks of amnesia and hypocrisy, specific condemnation of China for its supposed maltreatment of African borrowers is downright patronizing—to the borrowers that is. In the first place, the idea that China is giving African countries more money than they need and hence drowning them in unwanted debt implies that African countries are somehow unable to judge for themselves what they need and when enough is enough.

Furthermore, the idea that the terms and conditions of such loans are singularly rigged against African borrowers—and against African borrowers only—not only implies that they are not smart enough to realize it; it suggests that if they do, they are never reasonable enough to walk away. Similarly, the suggestion that the terms are unfavorable because they are not disclosed to outsiders (self-appointed referees who, presumably, will go through the agreements with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that African borrowers are not being conned) implies that those countries are not mature enough to undertake secret deals, a condition that would disqualify them as full and responsible actors in the global system. Same thing for the absurd notion that a surge in the number of international private bondholders is on balance a negative variable for African countries, rather than what it is in reality—an opportunity to compare rates and choose accordingly.

No one is denying that being massively indebted, apart from limiting spending on public services, increases affected countries’ susceptibility to political turmoil, as attested to by recent events in Kenya and Nigeria.

The basic problem is, first, denying African culpability for its present situation by suggesting that it was innocently put upon by malevolent foreign forces; second, ignoring the fact that what is commonly referred to as a “debt crisis” is in fact an inevitable outcome of African leaders’ well-documented financial recklessness; and third, refusing to acknowledge that debt forgiveness for African countries is pointless if not matched with a demand for better and more transparent governance.

No amount of external solicitousness for their plight will change the laws of economics by protecting African countries from the consequences of their actions or inactions. To continue pretending otherwise is harmful and infantilizing.