The Bondholders' View of the African Debt Crisis

The China in Africa Podcast

The ongoing debt crisis in Zambia and several other African countries is proving to be much more difficult to resolve than in previous years because of the expanded role of both Chinese lenders and bondholders. Both of these creditors have starkly different approaches in how they're handling the situation when countries find themselves unable to meet their obligations.

In Zambia, in particular, critics accuse the Chinese of not being forthcoming about the size and nature of their loan portfolio in the country. Similarly, private creditors face equal scorn for appearing to be inflexible.

But private creditors, for their part, say those critiques are not fair as they don't take into the legal obligations that asset managers, hedge funds, and other investors face as part of their fiduciary responsibility. Furthermore, given that many of the institutions that manage Eurobond holdings in Africa represent hundreds, even thousands of individual investors, getting them all to agree to a debt relief package would be difficult if not impossible.

The Emerging Markets Investors Alliance (EMIA), a U.S.-based non-profit industry group, represents many of those institutional investors that own Zambian debt. EMIA Research Analyst Ken Colangelo joins Eric & Cobus from New York to discuss the perspective of investors in the ongoing debt crisis in Zambia and elsewhere on the continent.

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