Africa’s Inconvenient Truth: Debt Distress and Climate-Resilient Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
August 2023
Due to multiple external shocks since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is facing acute debt distress and new highs in the cost of foreign capital. Concomitantly, the region needs to mobilize a stepwise level of financing to meet shared climate and development goals, under the Paris Agreement climate targets and the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Do SSA countries have the fiscal space necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement commitments and SDGs while also servicing their external debt?