Beijing doesn’t release data on its overseas loans, but the Johns Hopkins School of International Advanced Studies estimates that China lent US$143 billion to African countries between 2000 and 2017. Much of that remains unpaid. Lagarde said the IMF and World Bank were trying to bring more transparency to Chinese lending practices in Africa to better identify debt levels, loan terms and maturity dates. “It’s clear that any debt restructuring programmes going forward in the years to come will be more complicated than debt restructuring programmes that we conducted 10 years ago,” she said.
