Loading ...US cancels $1.1bn of Somalia’s debt in ‘historic’ financial agreement
Commitment by Mogadishu’s largest single lender is latest in series of deals to forgive ‘unsustainable’ $4.5bn debt
Most of Somalia’s debt had built up during the era of Siad Barre’s military dictatorship, which collapsed in the early 1990s and triggered a ruinous three-decade civil war.
Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, said the country had been “suffocating under the huge weight of unsustainable debt” as interest payments that could not be paid accrued “during the painful, prolonged period of state collapse”.
On Tuesday, the US and Somalia signed an agreement formalising debt cancellation worth $1.14bn.