“Debt cannot be repaid, first because if we don’t repay, lenders will not die. That is for sure. But if we repay, we are going to die. That is also for sure—those who led us to indebtedness gambled as if in a casino. As long as they had gains, there was no debate. But now that they suffer losses, they demand repayment. And we talk about crisis.”—Thomas Sankara

Isn’t it ironic that we live on a planet so perfectly apportioned with every continent cradled by waters, constantly flashed by a breeze of cool air, where the soils provide endless minerals, forests and food. Yet, we have still managed to concoct a box so brutal that it divides these perfectly defined continents into ‘beggars’ and ‘benevolent lords’? Of course, we’ll dress the division into fancy English words of debtor and creditor. A horrific tale as old as colonial atrocities, now smeared in sterile spreadsheets, debt paintings and multilateral rooms without acknowledging the indigenous group that had developed in a way that allows them to co-exist with the environment. 

But who owes who?

2025 was declared by the late Pope Francis, a Jubilee year for debt forgiveness. Of course, it had to take ‘spiritual’ gaslighting for the reckoning to arrive. Debt cancellation calls have always been loud and well stated, especially in the Global South with movements telling a true tale about the rigged structure of global debt making it difficult to ignore the adoption of a UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt. The urgency of its adoption is not just another policy demand. It’s the cries of African Women placed in an unfair task to choose between, food, health, survive climate disasters or finance debt.

Today, there are propositions under the recent draft text for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) to establish a debt convention. The same carries the hope of creating a multilateral sovereign debt resolution structure that does not prioritize the interests of creditors but rather promotes justice. The structure is also meant to be further built on the hope that it would provide faster, fairer debt restructurings and where generous, debt cancellations.  It is meant to recognize the sovereignty and humanity of debtor nations, whose debt in many cases stems from colonial theft, extraction, odious loans, global crises not created by them, and structural adjustment programs. And as some may argue, this convention is meant to finally put debtor and creditor countries on equal footing.

Well, equal footing? That’s the award?

Are we not all born equal? At least that’s what all the glamorous declarations, charters, treaties, Constitutions and covenants on human rights suggest. But who am I to quote these, because even the idea of equal humanity requires codification, as if we could not see it in our breath, our shared colour of blood, or even our births.  And yet, here we are, needing treaties to remind the world that the Global South is inhabited by humans who deserve the right to live without suffocation from illegitimate debt. That by virtue of their humanity, they should not have to choose between food, health, self-determination and repayment of Eurobonds to meet fiscal targets. 

How did we arrive here? 

The current global financial architecture is, unfortunately, not by mistake or game of chance but by design. It was built brick by brick on the extraction, inequality, manipulation and exploitation of labour, of the land, of culture, of knowledge, of humanity, and most violently, of bodies. It is on the bodies that the design makes its most vivid stamp. The design depends on the unpaid labour of African Women to function.. It depends on the commercialisation of bodies and cultures to sell narratives. And for Africa, these have been African women’s bodies in all their diversity who bear the brunt of systematic exploitation as second-class citizens. African women are not casualties of a broken system but its backbone, and yet are excluded from decisions meant to cure the system.

This design is not an economic miscalculation, but a deliberately designed structure meant to clothe formal colonialism in a new coat of extractive systems, such as the IMF and the World Bank. This new coat is intended to maintain the narrative of who is owed. Its blueprint, meticulously orchestrated by colonial history, is stamped with the vision that some countries are simply owed and others owe. Built on this hierarchy, the design maintains the position of extraction and exploitation, and to cover their tracks, they offer crumbs packaged as ‘development assistance.’ It doesn’t matter whether the countries that owe (the Global South) have paid back many times over with their lives, resources, knowledge, power, and on their bodies. In truth, they never owed anyone in the first place. But under this design, they will always owe.  

And in 2025, apart from owing nations and the neo-colonial financial institutions, they now also owe individuals. The world’s 10 richest ‘humans’ hold more than $1 trillion in combined wealth, and 60% of structurally low-income countries are at high risk of debt distress. How does one humanise an architectural system where capital is hoarded, not to meet the needs of humanity but for domination? A system where 1% of the population has ruthlessly obtained a license to burn the earth and make a profit, and if they please, make a token climate philanthropy on their terms. 

How do we reclaim the narrative of who is owed? 

Cancellation of debt is not a radical demand but a moral imperative. For now, the proposed UN Sovereign Debt Convention offers a positive step towards reclaiming the dignity of the majority over the comfort of the creditors. However, we must also be aware that reclaiming the narrative of who owes whom will not occur in closed-door negotiation rooms. We must continue to organise, we must rewrite the existing narrative, we must tell truth-telling stories, we must protest, we must decolonise, we must reimagine, and importantly, we must abolish and rebuild. We mustn’t dwell on the question of how much we owe, but rather on how much has been stolen from us. We are not asking for charity but demanding repair of our land and our bodies.

Precious Tricia Abwooli