In a commentary for The Brookings Institution, Bright Simmons advanced a sharply contrarian position on Africa’s debt debate, arguing that the continent’s real challenge is not borrowing per se, but poor borrowing decisionsreinforced by an activist discourse that has turned debt into a moral rather than an economic issue and demonised debt and lending institutions.
Simmons’ argument cuts against a dominant narrative which holds that debt is blocking Africa’s development and that African governments must simply borrow less. In his view, this framing mistakes symptoms for causes and risks depriving the continent of the capital required for long-term growth.
Popular narrative versus economic reality
A widely repeated activist claim is that many African countries now spend more on debt service than on healthcare, education and infrastructure combined. This is often presented as definitive evidence that debt repayments are crowding out development.
Simmons does not dispute that debt service burdens are heavy. What he disputes is the inference drawn from the numbers.
Much of the activist argument relies on “total debt service,” which bundles interest payments together with principal repayments. Interest is a genuine fiscal cost. Principal repayment, however, is a financing transaction—the return of capital previously borrowed. Treating the two as equivalent to social spending, Simmons argues, creates a distorted picture of public finance and feeds the misconception that debt repayment automatically deprives citizens of services.
In effect, debt itself becomes the villain, rather than the quality, purpose and governance of borrowing.
How debt became the scapegoat
Simmons argues that activism has unintentionally helped shift Africa’s debt debate away from fundamentals. By framing debt as inherently exploitative, campaigners have focused public attention on how much countries borrow, rather than how and why they borrow.
This obscures deeper structural problems: weak economic management, high risk premiums that push borrowing costs into double digits, volatile commodity revenues, corruption, and politically motivated spending. These factors—not borrowing in itself—are what turn debt into a trap.
He also criticises the superficial use of debt-to-GDP ratios by African officials who cite the high ratios of advanced economies as justification for further borrowing. The comparison, Simmons argues, ignores the crucial difference that rich countries are structurally productive, generate wealth internally, borrow largely in their own currencies, and operate deep capital markets—conditions that most African economies do not meet.
A standard the rich would fail
To expose what he sees as the weakness of activist framing, Simmons challenges campaigners to apply their preferred metric consistently across countries.
If principal plus interest repayments were compared with social spending in advanced economies, several would appear—by activist logic—to prioritise creditors over citizens.
In Japan, the government’s annual debt service allocation is enormous. In recent budgets, total debt servicing—including interest and redemptions—has exceeded ¥28 trillion, while education spending is under ¥6 trillion. Even interest alone accounts for around 2% of GDP, and total debt service is significantly larger than the education budget.
In the United States, federal net interest costs have surged sharply with higher interest rates, reaching roughly $1 trillion annually—already exceeding federal spending on education and approaching defence-level significance. When principal refinancing is included, gross debt service dwarfs most social programmes.
Italy and Hungary show similar patterns. Italy’s interest bill alone is close to 4% of GDP, with large annual redemptions layered on top. Hungary’s combined interest and redemptions exceed spending on education and rival combined health and education outlays.
Yet none of these countries are described as victims of a “rigged” international financial system, nor is their borrowing portrayed as morally illegitimate.
For Simmons, this comparison exposes the flaw in activist logic. When the same metric turns advanced economies into apparent victims of debt injustice, the problem is not the countries—it is the metric.
Why borrowing less is not the answer
Despite Africa’s genuine debt stresses, Simmons rejects the conclusion that the solution is simply to borrow less.
Africa’s infrastructure, energy, healthcare, education and climate-adaptation deficits are too large to be closed through domestic revenues alone. Tax bases remain narrow, savings rates low, and concessional finance is shrinking. Without debt, large-scale development is mathematically impossible.
Turning debt into a taboo, Simmons warns, risks cutting Africa off from long-term capital and discouraging precisely the investment needed to raise productivity and incomes.
Borrow more—but borrow better
Simmons’ argument ultimately reframes the debate. Africa’s problem is not debt itself, but bad debt.
He calls for a decisive shift toward:
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borrowing tied strictly to productive, growth-enhancing investments;
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longer maturities and lower refinancing risk;
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stronger project appraisal and institutional capacity; and
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far greater transparency and accountability in the use of borrowed funds.
By contrast, narratives that demonise borrowing itself risk addressing optics rather than economics.
Debt, in Simmons’ formulation, is a tool—neither inherently virtuous nor inherently destructive. The danger, he argues, is that by treating debt as the enemy, Africa may abandon one of the few viable pathways to closing its development gap.
