The New Dark Age

Thursday, 22 May 2025 — The Tricontinental

The art in this newsletter was produced by Tricontinental’s art department for our May dossier, Africa’s Faustian Bargain with the International Monetary Fund.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

At the start of 2025, Sudan registered an alarming debt-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio of 252%. This means that the country’s total public debt is 2.5 times the size of its entire annual economic output. It is not hard to understand why Sudan is in such dire straits: as we outlined in last week’s newsletter, the country has been engulfed in a conflict for decades, which has severely disrupted any possibility of economic growth and financial stability. Yet, in a way, Sudan – one of the richest countries in terms of resources but poorest in terms of household income and wealth – is also representative of what has been happening on the African continent. As of 2022, the average debt-to-GDP ratio in Sub-Saharan countries was 60%, having doubled from 30% in 2013. This rise in indebtedness is shocking.

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