Zambia’s official creditors, led by China and France, agreed to provide financing assurances the country has been waiting for to secure final approval from the International Monetary Fund for a $1.4 billion bailout.
The commitments to provide debt relief were the final hurdle needed for the Washington-based lender’s board to sign off on a deal Zambia first requested in 2019. It’s a significant step in a slow-moving debt-restructuring process that the government started in 2020, when it became Africa’s first pandemic-era sovereign defaulter.
