Nigeria will spend about $11.6 billion servicing its \u200cdebt in 2026, nearly half of its projected government revenue, President Bola Tinubu said, as he called for an overhaul of a global financial system he said penalises African borrowers.<\/p>\n
Debt-servicing costs are crowding out spending on infrastructure, healthcare and education, \u200bhe said, despite a government tax overhaul aimed at boosting revenues in Africa’s most populous \u200bcountry. Nigeria spent $5.15 billion servicing its debt in 2025, data from the Debt Management \u2060Office showed.<\/p>\n
In a speech at the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi on Tuesday, Tinubu said high borrowing \u200bcosts and limited access to long-term finance were diverting resources away from industry, skills and infrastructure, in \u200bwhat he called a structural disadvantage for African economies.\u00a0The summit, co-hosted by Kenya and France, drew leaders from more than 30 countries.<\/p>\n
“Every single dollar that leaves our treasury to pay punitive interest rates is a dollar that did not go \u200binto our steel sector, our textile mills, our agro-processing plants, or our digital industries,” he said, adding \u200bit also meant fewer trained engineers and less affordable power for factories.<\/p>\n
Now in his third year in office and \u200caiming for \u2060re-election in January 2027, Tinubu has rolled out Nigeria’s biggest reforms in decades, scrapping costly fuel and energy subsidies, devaluing the currency and overhauling the tax system in a bid to stabilise an economy hit by inflation, foreign exchange shortages and external shocks.<\/p>\n
He said the “painful, homegrown” reforms had stabilised macroeconomic indicators and \u200blifted investor sentiment.<\/p>\n
But he \u200badded that the gains \u2060were being eroded by a global financial system that treats African sovereigns as persistently high-risk borrowers, driving up interest costs.<\/p>\n
Analysts led by the Nigerian Economic Summit \u200bGroup said this week that debt servicing remains a key vulnerability for the \u200bcountry.<\/p>\n
Tinubu called \u2060for reforms including cheaper financing and deeper economic integration that prioritises Africa’s growth and prosperity.<\/p>\n
He also urged curbs on illicit financial flows and greater support for industrialisation, saying Africa still accounts for less than 2% of global \u2060manufacturing.<\/p>\n
“Nigeria \u200bis not asking for charity,” he said. “We’re demanding a financial system \u200bthat intentionally enables Africa to industrialize, to process its own minerals, refine its own crude oil, manufacture its own pharmaceuticals, and \u200bcompete fairly in global markets.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria will spend about $11.6 billion servicing its \u200cdebt in 2026, nearly half of its projected government revenue, President Bola Tinubu said, as he called for an overhaul of a global financial system he said penalises African borrowers. Debt-servicing costs are crowding out spending on infrastructure, healthcare and education, \u200bhe said, despite a government tax […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,27],"tags":[196,175],"class_list":["post-20861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-west-africa","tag-bola-tinubu","tag-nigeria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20863,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20861\/revisions\/20863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}