Africa: A New Approach to the Third World Debt Crisis

Dozens of countries, large and small, have foreign debts so large that their interest payments on the debt are a crushing burden. The Republic of the Congo, for example, has annual debt service payments equal to 50 percent of its export earnings; Uganda's debt service equals 44 percent of its exports. Not surprisingly many countries cannot keep up with their interest payments, let alone ever hope of paying off the principal.