Zambia owes at least 18 Chinese creditors $6.6 billion, nearly twice as much as previously stated, according to a new report published by the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University. And that figure may be even higher as it doesn’t account for penalties accrued by various Zambian borrowers who’ve fallen behind in their payments.
While these latest findings confirm Zambia indeed has a very serious Chinese debt problem, the CARI report, however, details why the situation there is actually very different from that of other African countries that are also struggling to repay Chinese loans.
The report’s two authors, CARI Director Deborah Brautigam and Senior Research Assistant Yinxuan Wang join Eric & Cobus from Washington to discuss their findings and explain why Zambia is an outlier when it comes to Chinese debt in Africa.
SHOW NOTES:
- China-Africa Research Initiative: How Zambia and China Co-Created a Debt “Tragedy of the Commons” by Deborah Brautigam
- China-Africa Research Initiative: Zambia’s Chinese Debt in the Pandemic Era by Deborah Brautigam and Yinxuan Wang
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