Senegalese president Macky Sall called on Sunday for the creation of a pan-African credit ratings agency, saying that the “very arbitrary” nature of the system of assessment by international organisations made it more expensive for African countries to borrow on global debt markets. “In 2020, when all economies were suffering fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, 18 of the 32 African economies rated by at least one of the big agencies saw their ratings downgraded,” the AFP news agency quotes him as saying. That meant that 56 percent of African countries saw their credit ratings downgraded, compared with 31 percent of countries globally over the same period, Sall argued.
