How much we pay for the debt that we incur determines a great deal in our lives. This is true of countries too. In the world of sovereign debt – money raised or borrowed by governments – the cost of debt is dependent on, among other factors, how rating agencies “grade” a country.
It’s a sensitive issue. Three agencies dominate the rating business. A criticism often meted out is that they judge African countries more harshly than others, which pushes up borrowing rates. These tensions lie behind the acrimonious fall-out between one of the big three – Fitch – and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).
On 28 January 2026 Fitch announced it had downgraded the bank’s credit rating to junk status, and that it was ending its relationship with the bank.
