Emerging-Market Debt Is Sliding Into Distress. Just Look at Ghana

A few blocks from Ghana’s statehouse in Accra sits a 14.5 acre parcel of prime real estate with a football field-sized hole in the middle of it. What should be emerging from the ground is the frame and sweeping, concave roof of the futuristic 5,000-seat National Cathedral of Ghana. Instead the project has stalled, a victim of an economic crisis in the West African country, which was until recently one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and a magnet for foreign investment.

The cathedral’s original price tag of $100 million has quadrupled amid an economic crisis that has seen record inflation and the cedi, the world’s worst performing currency this year, lose close to 60% of its value — almost double that of Ukraine.