The Rio Times Africa Intelligence
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
By Matthias Camenzind, Publisher
Africa's biggest lender has stopped lending. The debt is still there.
New Chinese commitments to African governments fell 46% in a single year, to just over US$2 billion — the steepest drop ever recorded. What was built on the old lending has to be paid for anyway: Angola owes about US$21 billion, Ethiopia and Kenya close to US$7 billion each. Somebody now has to fund the next road, and nobody has said who.
Every French base in the Sahel is closed. Russia moved in.
Ghana defaulted four years ago and just had to turn lenders away
Zimbabwe says 720 tonnes of lithium left on forged paperwork
Two rival railways are competing for the same copper
A bus crash on a volcano road has put Cabo Verde in mourning
The state of the continent
If you missed the last few days
Yesterday we wrote about a capital where two authorities collect tax on the same street, because a state that cannot collect is not fully a state. Today the question moves one step outward. Taxation is what a government raises at home. Borrowing is what it raises abroad, and for two decades one country supplied most of it.
Good morning. The totals first, because they are the argument. Between 2000 and 2024, Chinese lenders signed 1,319 loan agreements worth US$180.87 billion with African governments and regional institutions. That is the figure kept by the Chinese Loans to Africa Database at Boston University, whose January update confirmed what everyone in the market suspected: new commitments in 2024 came to just under US$2.1 billion. A 46% fall in twelve months, and the steepest on record.
Beijing has not walked away. It has changed what it will pay for — away from the enormous infrastructure loan and toward what its own officials call small and beautiful: projects that are quicker to build and quicker to repay. Even those were concentrated in five countries last year: Angola, Kenya, Congo, Senegal and Egypt.
The lending stopped. The debt did not. Angola carries about US$21 billion of Chinese debt, Ethiopia roughly US$6.8 billion, Kenya US$6.7 billion. Zambia and Ghana are furthest along in restructuring through the G20 framework; Chad closed its case in 2022 and Ethiopia signed its creditor memorandum last year. These are the countries now negotiating repayment terms with a lender that has stopped writing new cheques.
Why it matters: The question this leaves open is the most important one on the continent and nobody has a good answer to it: who funds the next road? Not Western development finance, which has been shrinking for a decade and is not built for that scale. Not the eurobond market, which shut for most African issuers after 2022 and has reopened only for a handful. What is actually filling the gap is domestic — governments borrowing from their own banks and pension funds, in local currency, at rates that would be considered distressed anywhere else, as Ghana did yesterday. There is something healthy in that: money raised at home cannot be withdrawn by a foreign investment committee in a bad quarter. There is also something corrosive: every unit a pension fund lends its government is one it does not lend a business, and a continent that finances itself at 12% does not build railways. Beijing's retreat is being read as a geopolitical story. It is really a capital-formation story, and it will shape the next decade more than any base closure will. Watch whether the Gulf states and the multilateral banks step into the infrastructure gap — and on what terms.
African currencies & commodities
Per US dollar, 8 September.
CEDI · GH
11.41
four-year bond cleared at 12%
KWANZA · AO
926.6
US$21bn owed to China
SHILLING · KE
129.5
racing to refinance
NAIRA · NG
1,321
record share sale on the 14th
RAND · ZA
15.99
steady
POUND · EG
50.92
between IMF reviews
KWACHA · ZM
19.17
two railways bidding for its copper
BIRR · ET
161.2
mobile money losing money
The big moves
Zimbabwe banned raw lithium exports in February. It says 720 tonnes left anyway, on forged papers › A finance director at a company called Orequest was remanded by a Harare magistrate on Saturday over an alleged attempt to move lithium ore on fraudulent export documents. Prosecutors say the syndicate had already shipped out 720 tonnes of unprocessed ore in 23 truckloads before the case was brought. Investigators have accounted for 420 tonnes of it — 300 at a yard in Ruwa, 60 in abandoned containers, 60 stopped at the Forbes border post. The paperwork allegedly imitated documents from Bikita Minerals, one of the country's largest lithium producers; a separate case in July involved an outright cloned permit from the same company. The export ban exists to force local processing. This is what enforcement of it looks like.
Two railways are now competing to carry the same copper to two different oceans › The Lobito Corridor runs about 1,300 kilometres west from the Angolan port of Lobito to the Copperbelt of Zambia and Congo, backed by American and European money now put at more than US$6 billion, targeting a million tonnes of cargo a year by 2030. Pointing the other way, China, Zambia and Tanzania signed a US$1.4 billion, thirty-year concession for a Chinese contractor to rebuild and run the 1,860-kilometre TAZARA line to Dar es Salaam — a railway China originally built in the 1970s. Dubai's DP World holds a thirty-year concession on four of Dar es Salaam's twelve berths, which ties the eastern route to Gulf logistics money. Same minerals, two exits, three sponsors.
Every French combat base in the Sahel is now closed, and Russia has taken the space › Operation Barkhane peaked at about 5,500 troops. The unwinding ran from March 2022 to July 2025 and emptied bases in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Senegal and Ivory Coast — analysts call it the African Frexit. Mali went first, then Burkina Faso asked France to leave, then Niger expelled it after the coup. What remains is deliberately small: about 80 advisers in Ivory Coast, reduced footprints in Djibouti and Gabon, and a return to Chad this April for training rather than combat. Russia's state-run Africa Corps answers to the juntas paying it. And judge it on the only measure that counts: the tri-border area now produces more than half of all terrorism deaths worldwide, JNIM has been strangling fuel into Bamako for a year, and 6.8 million people are displaced inside their own countries. The French presence was not solving it either — which is why the juntas could expel it and stay popular. The replacement is not solving it and answers to nobody. Watch Benin, Togo and Ghana: that is where it stops being a Sahel story.
Which is why this matters: Ghana defaulted four years ago and just had to turn lenders away › Investors bid US$392 million for a new four-year cedi bond; the finance ministry took US$277 million and priced at 12.00%, the floor of its own range. Settlement was yesterday. Read the detail that the headline number hides: the paper was sold mainly to resident investors — Ghana's own banks and pension funds — not to foreign money. Twelve percent for four years is expensive, and every cedi a pension fund lends the state is one it does not lend a company. But it is money that cannot be pulled by an investment committee abroad in a bad month, and after 2022 Ghana has reason to prefer it.
Expat & living
If you drive in Madagascar, the state has stepped back from the pump › Petrol in Antananarivo has passed 5,300 ariary a litre — a little over US$1.20 — as the government withdraws from setting the price. For anyone budgeting in a foreign salary the practical consequence is not the level but the volatility: a subsidised price is predictable and an unsubsidised one is not, and transport costs feed straight into everything else on the island.
And if you are moving money around the continent, the map is changing again › Kenya's M-Pesa, the mobile money service most people on the continent measure the others against, has launched in Ethiopia, and the West African operator Wave has secured a banking licence. Worth knowing before you assume it works: Safaricom's Ethiopian unit is losing money heavily despite fast user growth. Winning a licence and building a usable payment network are two different projects, and cross-border transfers still fail more often than the marketing suggests.
Money, markets & business
A World Bank programme has connected 50 million Africans to electricity — and 600 million still have none, which is the number that puts the achievement in proportion
A wave of currency reform is testing Nigeria, Egypt and Zimbabwe at once · and Gulf money is moving in through ports as DP World and AD Ports expand
South Sudan has restarted oil exports while its vice-president faces trial · Gabon's new president won a seven-year term against a declining oil base · and Equatorial Guinea's economy shrank 5.4%
Madagascar's vanilla price has collapsed and its nickel plant has halted again · Sierra Leone is fighting a weak currency as iron ore exports pick up · and Liberia is overseeing a rail expansion for the same ore
The state and its citizens
At least 25 people died when a bus left the crater road on Cabo Verde's Fogo island — most of them children and teenagers, returning from the village inside the volcano to São Filipe. The driver, who normally took them to school, was among the dead. Two days of national mourning were declared
France's military withdrawal from the Sahel is complete, and Russia's Africa Corps has moved into the space — the background to the Niger coup attempt we reported on 3 September
Sierra Leone's former president flew home on Sunday, two years after being charged with treason — he had three months' leave for medical treatment and stayed more than two; in July the attorney-general quietly discontinued the case and has never said why
Africa's last absolute monarchy agreed to take up to 160 deportees from the United States for US$5.1 million · and Guinea-Bissau's military council has promised a vote by December
Nigeria, Kenya and Angola have set a 2027 election calendar that puts three incumbents against term limits at once · and the European Union is paying Tunisia and Mauritania to reduce departures
Culture
A white stone was lifted at Glidji, and Togo's Guin community exhaled — each year a priest brings up a stone from a sacred grove and its colour is read as the forecast for the year ahead. White is the good one. It is a harvest festival, a calendar and a piece of political theatre all at once, and the whole coast waits for the answer
The wider world, from our desks
Cuba has opened its tourism industry to private firms while the talks stay frozen, from our Latin America desk — the follow-up to yesterday's story about two American bidders circling Cuban nickel
Today: Colombian inflation accelerated to 6.24% in August ›
Matthias Camenzind
Publisher, The Rio Times
