The quarrel between the ancients and the moderns? While President Macky Sall of Senegal advocates the cancellation of African debts in a vision contained in an editorial published on April 9 in the Senegalese daily Le Soleil, Benin, through its Minister of Economy and of Finance, pleads rather for the access of African countries to “new credits”.

In a column published by Jeune Afrique, the treasurer of Benin, Romuald Wadagni, asserts: “these solutions (NDRL: debt cancellation), despite the immediate budgetary margin they offer, do not meet the challenges mentioned above and have significant drawbacks in the short and medium term”. On the strength of his arguments, the best African Minister of Finance of the year 2018 (according to the Financial Afrik ranking), believes that debt relief or a moratorium constitutes in this context, a call for indulgence from creditors and n does not provide structural solutions to the difficulties of States … “.

And to support its arguments by the perception, necessarily negative, that the rating agencies (these great oracles of modern times), prescribers of investors will have. “Beyond the rating agencies which could penalize the non-respect of a loan deadline, all the efforts made by our countries to improve the business climate and the perception of risk presented in the OECD classifications in particular and used to define the borrowing rate of many loans, will only be wiped out”.

The Minister of Finance aligns himself, in his intervention, with the arguments developed by Beninese President Patrice Talon who, in a letter addressed to the leaders of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, called last week for “ urgent mobilization of new liquidity instead of debt cancellations or moratoriums and the revival, on the other hand, of African economies via concessional financing by invigorating all opportunities for access to good debt like the countries developed”.

It should be recalled that President Macky Sall, now invested by the African Union to carry out debt advocacy, had called for “the cancellation of African public debt and the restructuring of its private debt according to mechanisms to be agreed”. Basically, the two visions, that of Cotonou and Dakar, say the same thing and converge towards the provision of liquidity to African States.

Canceling the debt or rescheduling it over one year will free up $44 billion in debt service (cumulative for 2020 maturities) for the benefit of other sectors. The signing of new debt under current conditions, apart from the fact that this will be done under unfavorable conditions, will contribute to the deepening of African debt and consequently to a tension on sovereign ratings according to the country profile. Clearly, Cotonou and Dakar are saying the same thing in different terms.