The COVID-19 pandemic is having a severe impact on Sao Tome and Principe's economy, exacerbating fiscal and external imbalances. Tourism activities and external remittances dropped sharply, while lockdown measures further deepened the recession. The authorities' swift actions and unprecedented...

Exports in sub-Saharan Africa have struggled to generate the kind of growth witnessed in Southeast Asia on the background of rising government debt. This article considers the extent to which government debt, which has tripled since 2008, may have constrained export-led growth in the region....

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)'s public debt burden remains a challenge to development. Key drivers of public debt include large-scale financing of infrastructure development, adverse impact of multiple shocks including COVID-19 pandemic, maturity mismatches, and high vulnerability to exchange rate...

Sub-Saharan African countries as a group showed a considerable reduction in public and external indebtedness in the early 2000s as a result of debt relief programs, higher economic growth, and improved fiscal management for some countries. More recently, however, vulnerabilities in some...

This paper presents new empirical evidence on how fiscal space in Sub-Saharan Africa has evolved over the past 15 years. Fiscal space is a multi-dimensional concept that is proxied by indicators capturing aspects of fiscal sustainability, balance sheet vulnerabilities, external debt positions,...

Despite the euphoria and hopes that followed the attainment of many Sub-Saharan African countries of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiatives, the region’s debt woe is at the center of global attention again less than 2 decades after the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries...