The vital role of forests in limiting the likelihood of dangerous climate change has precipitated renewed interest in debt-for-nature swaps. This article uses evidence on past debt-for-nature swaps and similar debt mechanisms to assess the recent second wave of debt swaps. It outlines five...

This paper critically reviews three decades of official creditors’ debt relief practice in Sub-Saharan Africa from a novel angle, i.e. along debt relief’s similarities with other aid modalities. We show that debt relief is a true ‘chameleon’ which mimics different sorts of aid, from...

This paper systematically reviews recent experience with debt-for-development swaps in Indonesia, the only debtor country where the number of such operations could warrant its qualification as a genuine government debt relief and development finance policy. First, we show that the 11 swaps...

This paper starts from the concept of ‘original sin’ to demonstrate that the development of local currency bond markets remains a priority for Sub-Saharan African countries, both as a prevention mechanism against external shocks and to exploit growth-boosting investment opportunities. We...

In the light of worldwide commitments to meet global basic learning needs made at the 1990 United Nations Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien, the 2000 World Education Forum in Dakar and the 2000 United Nations Millennium Summit in New York, UNESCO has established a Working Group on...

Sub-Saharan African governments have made significant progress in developing domestic local currency bond markets over the last decade. While this bodes well for their countries’ economic resilience and facilitates necessary investments, many challenges remain.

This paper studies the current state and drivers of the development of government local currency bond markets (LCBMs) in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region whose progress in developing such markets has only recently received attention in the literature. We argue that well-developed LCBMs could reduce...