African religious leaders raise concern over increase in public debt

Interfaith Africa Leaders have called for changes to the global economy, raising concern that this year alone Africa will spend $90 billion servicing public debt. 

The leaders, who converged in the lead up to the Jubilee 2025 in Kigali, called for debt forgiveness and processes to support economic development. 

The dignitaries released a statement to G20, G7, UN, International Monetary Fund and World Bank decision makers.

The representatives were drawn from  Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and other Christian denominations, as well as national councils of churches, interreligious councils across 13 countries in Africa and regional  religious organisations.

“Our countries face again agonising choices between spending and investing on their people and paying their creditors,” Fr.Charles Chilufya, the executive director of The Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa (Jena), said. 

The religious leaders recalled the work of faith communities 25 years ago during the Jubilee 2000 year, which led to the largest ever collective debt relief initiative. 

According to the clergy, the heavily indebted poor countries/Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative mobilised more than $130 billion in debt relief in 38 countries.

“Former President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania was among the first African political leaders raising their voices to question the need to put debt above the lives of our children,” Rev Canon Makunzo Moses Matonya, secretary general of the Christian Council of Churches in Tanzania, said. 

“Unfortunately, we have seen debt rise to levels where we have to face that question again." 

Since 2010, African countries’ interest payments have more than doubled, as a percentage of their revenue. 

At the same time, their combined spending on health, education, social protection and climate amount to two-thirds of debt payments.

"Early in the millennium, debt relief freed the fiscal space for important poverty reduction investments,” Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto in Nigeria, said. 

“An important focus for us, as then, is that we have good governance safeguards to protect public participation and accountability in the use of those funds."

Faith leaders in Africa have become increasingly vocal as the continent faces the effects of multiple crises.

“We have allowed a divorce between traditional economic approaches and spiritual values,” Sheikh Ibrahim Lethome, of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, said. 

“As faith leaders, we have a role in guiding our communities so they can make those connections," he added.

The faith leaders called for responsible lending and borrowing principles, debt contract clauses that share climate and other risks and additional sources of finance that do not create debt in order to prevent new high indebtedness cycles.

“While we have moved forward critical debt relief and aid, we still need improvements in debt relief and aid processes,” Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious development organisation Jubilee USA Network and a co-organiser of the convening of African leaders, said. 

Jena is a diverse community of faith-inspired Jesuit NGOs working towards an Africa where people can unlock their full potential, free from direct, cultural and structural violence.