In 1987, in Addis Ababa, Thomas Sankara called on African nations to form a united front against their debt, a debt born of rising US interest rates and falling export revenues in the late 1970s. Relief came later: the Naples Terms wrote off two-thirds of what was owed to official creditors.
Why does Sankara's Addis Ababa speech still resonate today?
From Addis Ababa's Africa Hall to today's negotiating tables, one thread runs through it all: African debt is eased through collective leverage, not country by country in isolation, the very kind Thomas Sankara called for in 1987.
On 29 July 1987, Thomas Sankara took the podium at the 25th OAU summit, inside the vast Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, before Africa's heads of state. There, he proposed a "united front" of African nations against debt: a call to act together rather than in scattered ranks.
Decades on, the speech remains one of Sankara's most memorable. His legacy still burns bright among Burkina Faso's youth and, more broadly, across Africa, where he has become an icon, an “African Che Guevara” alongside Patrice Lumumba.
Where did the debt that overwhelmed Africa in the 1980s come from?
In the late 1970s, the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates just as export revenues were falling across the developing world. For many African states, whose economies depended on income from a handful of raw materials, this double shock dealt a brutal blow to public finances and fuelled growing external debt.
Loans taken out that decade from international financial institutions and developed countries went on to weigh heavily on debt servicing, leaving African states unable to put their resources towards other priorities. According to economist Philippe Hugon, the crisis that set in, with external debt and the financial imbalances tied to these rent-based economies, led, under pressure from lenders, to a radical shift.
How was this debt eventually eased?
The “Naples Terms” marked a major step in addressing African debt: they provided for the write-off of two-thirds of what was owed to official creditors. This partial relief was later extended through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
More recently, the International Monetary Fund approved debt relief for 25 African countries.
Who lends to Africa today, and what about closer to home?
The landscape of Africa's creditors has changed dramatically. For Sonia Le Gouriellec, China's return to the continent, chiefly through its lending, is the most significant shift in Africa's external relations since the end of the Cold War. This shift places the question of who the creditors actually are back at the centre of the debt debate.
Closer to home, this isn't just a matter of distant geopolitics. For several years now, debt has dominated much of Tunisia's public debate. Borrowing taken on notably from the International Monetary Fund has led successive governments to adopt austerity measures as part of adjustment plans, a choice that continues to fuel public discussion.
From Addis Ababa's Africa Hall to today's negotiating tables, one thread runs through it all: African debt is never eased country by country, in isolation, but through collective leverage, the very kind Thomas Sankara called for in 1987. The write-offs secured since then, from the Naples Terms to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, show that relief is won when pressure holds together. But the face of the creditors has changed: French president Emmanuel Macron has himself said he wants to "massively cancel the debt of African countries".
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