Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze

The advocates of a rigorous and comprehensive debt restructuring spoke the language of “economic reality” and “debt sustainability,” but as the experience of the advanced economies themselves showed, if you borrowed in a currency you controlled, those were negotiable parameters, ultimately at the disposition of central banks. For advocates of a new Africa like Songwe, the governing imperative was the scale of their continent’s potential and the immensity of the challenges it faced. The economic reality that dominated UNECA’s vision was the drama of Africa’s population growth and its urgent need for infrastructure. By 2040, UNECA predicted, Africa would have the largest workforce in the world. It would account for 40 percent of the world’s young workers.52 According to the UN, to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the continent needed to be spending $1.3 trillion per annum.53 Not for nothing was “from billions to trillions” the World Bank’s motto of 2015.54 To get there, what was needed was more credit, by practically any means and from any source.