Nigeria needs help from the international community in tackling its debt burden according to Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB).
He disclosed this Nigeria International Economic Partnership Forum in New York on Thursday.
He stated that financing is critical to solving Nigeria’s development challenges.
“Financing is critical because the debt to GDP ratio of Africa has increased to 70 percent — several countries are the risk of high debt distress due to unstable, unsustainable debt levels.
“Nigeria’s total debt level is N42.84 trillion or $103 billion. External debt levels stand at N16.61 trillion or $40 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, Nigeria needs help to tackle this debt burden.
“International partnerships on debt are helping Africa, and Nigeria. The issuance of special drawing rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund of $650 billion helped provide liquidity support for countries. However, Africa only received $33 billion out of all of that. Pretty small.
“A call made by the African heads of State for developed economies to rechannel $100 billion of additional SDRs to Africa will go a long way to reduce the debt burden in Nigeria.
“Allocating this SDR, some of this, through the African Development Bank will actually allow us to leverage it four times because we are a leveraging machine. We can deliver more financing to Nigeria and Africa.
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