PhD seminar - Niccolo Rescia
2025-05-27 09:00 - 09:45 UTC | Îlot Bernard du Bois - Amphithéâtre, AMU - AMSE, 5-9 boulevard Maurice Bourdet, 13001 Marseille
The African sovereign external and domestic debt market is only a fraction of global capital markets and public debt stock, yet it represents a majority of distressed sovereign credit and high-yield debt. A critical lack of granular data (specifically on domestic debt) means it remains severely understudied. Existing datasets — such as the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics (IDS) or proprietary financial databases — often lack detail at the instrument level and provide limited coverage of domestic debt issuances. This paper addresses this issue by carefully tracking domestic debt alongside external debt at the instrument and auction levels. We present N-ADD, the most comprehensive and detailed dataset on sovereign borrowing across 54 African countries. For external debt, N-ADD covers official debt for all 54 countries and commercial external debt for 21 countries with access to international capital markets. For domestic debt, N-ADD includes bonded instruments at the auction and issuance levels for 51 countries. Sources are drawn from both current and archived websites of finance ministries, central banks, and debt management offices. Each record includes issuance and maturity dates, amounts in local currency and USD equivalent, interest rates, coupon structures, and issuance prices (when available). The dataset provides an updated perspective on the debt boom of the 2010s and the dynamics underlying the debt crises following the COVID pandemic. Its main contribution is to provide micro-level (instrument- and issuance-level) data for comparing external and domestic indebtedness dynamics amongst African sovereigns, covering both the Great Financial Crisis and the COVID period, providing a fresh perspective on related sovereign debt crises. We document a number of previously documented stylized facts at new levels of granularity, including (i) the sharp rise in interest payments and refinancing cost challenging African debt management offices, and (ii) the increased reliance on domestic debt to fund budget gaps in times of crisis, enabled by decades of domestic financial sector deepening.\n\nContact: Philippine Escudié: philippine.escudie[at]univ-amu.frLucie Giorgi: lucie.giorgi[at]univ-amu.frKla Kouadio: kla.kouadio[at]univ-amu.frLola Soubeyrand: lola.soubeyrand[at]univ-amu.fr

Plus d'informations: https://amse-aixmarseille.fr/en/events/niccolo-rescia-0
