Africa's Next Debt Crisis: A Relational Comparison of Chinese and Western Lending to Zambia

Abstract

AbstractAfrica faces a new debt crisis fuelled by Chinese and Western lending. At the forefront is Zambia, which defaulted on Eurobond payments in 2020. The article sets the developing Africa‐wide crisis within a relational comparison that draws the current Zambian moment together with the financial collapse of the 1980s. By placing Chinese lending within a comparative global frame, we make three contributions. First, Zambia provides a “spatial fix” for capital, but such African borrowing is not passive and shapes hegemonic struggles between China and the US. Thus secondly, Africa's relationship with debt is co‐constituent in the remaking of the global economy, as signalled by the contested execution and interpretation of development‐as‐modernisation. Finally, a relational comparison of the two debt crises demonstrates that global capitalist hegemony is, partly, engineered by the consent and coercion of African governments, yet the human costs of borrowing are fully borne by the world's poorest.