The African debt situation is likely to worsen due to the difficulties of the tourism sector. Countries dependent on tourism, by increasing spending and reducing revenues, see their borrowing needs increase.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) in its 2021 African Economic Outlook report indicated that Africa's debt is expected to grow by 10 to 15 percentage points in 2021.

According to the institution, this rise in the continent's debt will be fueled by the covid-19 pandemic that has severely disrupted the continent's economies. Specifically, the AfDB says the main contributors to this increase in African debt "should be tourism-dependent economies and other non-oil resource-intensive economies."
These savings have been largely impacted by restrictive measures that have put a stop to the arrival of international travelers, and even to domestic tourism.
The Bank calls on African countries to improve the efficiency of their debt-financed investments. "It's best to make sure that the debt is used to finance the most productive projects, that is, those that generate enough growth to pay the debt in the future," she says.

Policy policymakers should therefore take advantage of the current low global interest rates to borrow relatively cheap capital to finance high-yield public investment.