Credit Ratings: Africa launches AfCRA in Port Louis to stop paying 9 dollars in interest for every 100 borrowed

The African Union officially launched the Africa Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA), the first pan-African credit rating agency, on October 7, 2026, in Port Louis, Mauritius, on the sidelines of the second annual African Credit Rating Conference. According to the African Union, the institution is tasked with assessing the creditworthiness of African states, their local authorities, and their businesses, and giving the continent a voice in global financial governance.

What Africa pays to borrow

One figure summarizes the stakes: in 2024, African countries paid approximately 9 dollars in interest for every 100 dollars borrowed on international markets, compared to 4.70 dollars for emerging Asia and 6.50 dollars for Latin America, according to OECD estimates cited by Africanews. This gap is not paid in accounting abstractions, but in schools and clinics that are not built.

The African Union points out that the continent's external debt service has risen from 61 billion dollars in 2010 to 163 billion in 2024. In the majority of African countries, interest payments now exceed health or education budgets.

Twenty-three countries that no one rates

The second problem is silence. Of the continent's 55 states, only 32 are rated by the three major Western agencies—Fitch, Moody's, and S&P—and 23 are not rated at all, according to the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the AU institution that spearheaded the project. A country that is not rated is a country that international investors treat as risky by default.

An agency that states cannot own

AfCRA is designed to resist the suspicion of complacency: the African Union presents it as private, self-funded, and independent, and governments cannot hold shares in it. Its headquarters are in Port Louis, with regional subsidiaries planned. The African Development Bank and national regulators are among the partners; the South African firm Plus94 is serving as a technical advisor.

The project has been a long time coming: adopted by the AU Conference in 2018, supported by African finance ministers in Nairobi in July 2023, and subsequently provided with a methodology by the APRM.

"Fair ratings, not favorable ones"

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu wrote on X that Africa wanted fair ratings, not favorable ones. Jacob Oreki, a consultant at the Strathmore University Foundation in Kenya, reminded AFP that an agency is judged on its independence and accuracy.

The schedule for the first ratings has not been announced. For analysts, the real test will come the day AfCRA downgrades the rating of an African state. It is by this test, and not by the speeches in Port Louis, that its credibility will be measured.