How Beijing’s Africa Ambitions, Financed by China’s Mega Banks, Triggered a Crisis in

Zambia Beholden to Chinese creditors, the power utility mirrored Zambia, one of the world’s most indebted countries and the first in Africa to default on its sovereign debt during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the country’s largest state-owned company, ZESCO was a significant contributor to Zambia’s overall debt. Now, newly revealed documents show how Chinese lenders, working with Chinese contractors in Zambia, piled loans onto the country and its ailing state-owned enterprises. When it came time for ZESCO to pay, ICBC adopted what analysts see as a hardball stance to recover debt from a struggling borrower. ... Chinese lenders like ICBC were willing to make onerous and high-risk loans to a country that could not afford them. ICIJ

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL