The Ebola outbreak which is ravaging West Africa, could cost $33 billion, the World Bank estimated, prompting worries about the continent’s growth prospects. But the sovereign debt market is booming, with sub-Saharan African countries raising nearly $7 billion so far this year, more than in all of 2013, according to Dealogic, a market research firm. The Ebola outbreak, terrorism , kidnapping and other malice bedeviling Africa could not dither investors from jostling from Lagos to Cairo, Cairo to Johannesburg to seal one deal or another. Africa is the place to be for business.
The yields on many of the new bonds in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria have dipped even as the Ebola crisis has intensified. That means that the market’s outlook for those countries has improved, although that could change, particularly for West African countries, if health officials’ warnings for the region turn increasingly dire.
Bankers are jockeying for the next sovereign debt deal in Africa, a continent that foreign investors have long been wary of for its economic woes, rampant poverty and political instability. Now that narrative is changing, and one sub-Saharan nation after another is jumping into the debt market.
