The African Development Bank has approved three more years of funded dialogue on Zimbabwe’s arrears. The roadmap said the arrears would be cleared by early 2026.
The G20 met in Asheville on 1 September and offered a non-binding template. Africa needs a binding UN treaty on sovereign debt, and the next twelve months are where that fight sits.
A phone call from a stranger, a board that took a risk on a 33 year old, and five filled notebooks. What twenty years in the civic space taught me, and the three lessons I am carrying to AFRODAD.
African governments are restricting mineral exports, and the measures are being read as a continental assertion of resource sovereignty. The design of those measures tells a more modest story about who they were built to protect.
Two negotiations now under way will shape African public finance for a generation. The UN tax convention is in line-by-line drafting and the Borrowers’ Platform is building a debtor caucus that has never existed. Both will be won or lost in clauses that read like housekeeping.
Social spending floors sit in IMF programmes as indicative targets, so they carry no consequence when they break. Across Africa the adjustment lands on unpaid care work.
Last week I wrote about the nurse in Manchester who wires her sister’s school fees to Harare every month. Look closer at what her money buys. School fees. A grandmother’s blood pressure tablets. Crèche fees so a cousin can keep her market stall. The wire
Every month, a nurse in Manchester wires her sister’s school fees to Harare. A driver in Houston sends rent money to his mother in Lagos. A teacher in Johannesburg pays a cousin’s hospital bill in Bulawayo. None of them call this development finance. They call
It has been some months since I last wrote here. One question pulled me back: as the world scrambles for Africa’s critical minerals, who carries the cost, and who captures the value? Africa is setting new terms Something is shifting across the continent. In February
When I entered the High-Level Dialogue on Rethinking Debt Sustainability and Exploring Africa’s Alternative Financing Models on 17 November 2025 in Johannesburg, I felt the pulse of a continent refusing to be defined by its liabilities. Convened by the African Union Commission, AFRODAD, UNDP, UNECA,