Africa’s next debt crisis: regulatory dilemmas and radical insights

Abstract

ABSTRACTA new African debt crisis appears imminent, which will have new features because several countries have recently introduced international sovereign bonds. Organisations such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank increasingly acknowledge the risk of such a crisis, but continue to prescribe debt-management strategies based on liberalisation and government spending cuts. Insights drawn from liberals favouring government regulation identify an alternative policy direction, while Marxist scholars raise serious concerns about the merits and implications of the bonds altogether. These alternative approaches have the potential to enrich inter-governmental policy discussions and potentially avert the looming new African debt crisis.