In an effort to counter the dominance of well-known international companies and offer evaluations that more correctly reflect the continent’s economic reality, a new African-led credit rating agency is scheduled to launch by the end of September, Bloomberg said on Monday.
By the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026, the African Credit Rating Agency, supported by the African Union’s African Peer Review Mechanism, will publish its first sovereign credit report.A shortlist of applicants for the chief executive position has already been finalized, and an appointment is anticipated in the third quarter, according to Misheck Mutize, APRM’s lead specialist on credit-rating agencies.
The global ratings giants Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Ratings, and S&P Global Ratings have been under fire from African countries for their perceived unfair and opaque assessments, which prompted the creation of AfCRA.
These organizations have frequently been charged with misjudging African economies and using bad credit outlooks to drive up borrowing costs.
Last week, the African Export-Import Bank was downgraded by Fitch, a move that the APRM questioned as erroneous and reflecting a “misunderstanding of the governance architecture of African financial institutions.”
According to the ratings agency, all of its transnational evaluations are based on publicly accessible, globally uniform rating criteria.
Two of the most outspoken opponents of the global ratings business are Ghana and Zambia, both of whom have recently had debt defaults.
AfCRA would not be state-owned despite its continental focus, a conscious decision made to maintain independence and prevent conflicts of interest, Mutize stated. Rather, African private-sector companies will own the majority of it; however, no names have been revealed since talks are still in progress.
The transaction adviser is MCB Capital Markets, which is a member of the biggest banking group in Mauritius.
AfCRA’s initial focus will be on local-currency debt ratings, which proponents say might improve domestic capital markets and lessen Africa’s need on borrowing in foreign currencies. Mutize emphasized that the agency’s evaluations will not be forgiving.
“It is crucial to dispel the notion that the purpose of AfCRA is to assign favorable ratings to Africa,” he stated.
