African faith leaders are calling for debt forgiveness because the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee 12 months approaches to assist their countries tackle growing economic crises.
“We urgently need a latest debt jubilee to bring hope to humankind, and to bring the planet back from the brink of becoming uninhabitable,” said 27 religious leaders from 13 countries, addressing the G20, G7, United Nations, IMF and World Bank in a July 19 statement.
Participants within the Kigali, Rwanda, meeting included representatives from the Catholic Church in addition to Anglicans, Lutherans, other Protestants, Muslims and each interfaith and national councils of churches. The clergy are frontline witnesses to the rising costs of living, wars, vulnerable health care systems, climate change, pandemic impacts and other economic challenges which are stirring discontent across the continent. The faith leaders said their countries face “agonizing decisions” between spending on their very own people and paying their creditors.
“Unfortunately, inequities within the international tax, financial and trading systems, along with gaps in domestic governance, continued to foster unsustainable debt,” the statement said.
The Catholic Church observes Jubilee every 25 years as a period of forgiveness and reconciliation, though Pope Francis ushered in an “extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy” in 2015. The Vatican officially declared 2025 the 12 months of Jubilee in May this 12 months. The celebration will begin with the ceremonial opening of the Holy Door of the St. Peter Basilica on Christmas Eve 2024 and ends in December 2025.
Africa’s debt is at its highest level in over a decade. Countries have taken much more debt with mounting pressures from inflation, COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Africa’s external debt reached an estimated $1.2 trillion by the top of 2023, in response to the African Development Bank, about 23% of Africa’s GDP in 2022 and 140% of its exports, making servicing the debt increasingly difficult. This 12 months, Africa is predicted to pay $163 billion to service its debt, compared with $61 billion in 2010.
While the Trump administration declared debt relief to Africa unhelpful, advocating for foreign investment projects from the U.S., President Joe Biden has advocated for creditor nations to scale back high debt burdens and help provide higher financing terms through international financial institutions. Both administrations have sought to counter China’s influence within the region.
The faith leaders point to the preceding Jubilee Year in 2000, when a coalition for debt forgiveness successfully freed $130 billion in debt relief in 38 countries and reduced poverty, they are saying.
“While we now have moved forward critical debt relief and aid, we still need improvements in debt relief and aid processes,” said Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious development organization Jubilee USA Network and a co-organizer of the convening of African leaders. “If we had the debt policies and institutions religious leaders called for 25 years ago, we might have tools to assist address the climate and poverty crises.”
Those policies include improved access to everlasting, rules-based processes that bind creditors into debt reductions and lower the prices of international crises equivalent to the COVID-19 pandemic response to limit suffering in developing nations.
“We are calling for debt cancellation with clear demands for appropriate mechanisms to make sure the cancellation is just not abused by recipient nations,” the Rev. Lesmore Ezekiel, a Nigerian Lutheran who’s the pinnacle of programs on the All Africa Conference of Churches, told Religion News Service.
According to Sheikh Ibrahim Lethome, a Kenyan Muslim scholar, African countries entered this state of indebtedness because they’ve mismanaged the borrowed money.
“When we mismanage resources, we find yourself with this problem,” Lethome, a participant within the meeting, told RNS. “We have taken a debt. We need to service this debt, but whenever you take a look at the way in which this money was spent, there’s nothing to point out for it in any respect.”
The statement ends with a call to the international community.
“You have the facility and the responsibility to steer (lending) in the trail that restores hope and renewal,” the religion leaders said.
© Religion News Service
