Tidjane Thiam, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and others call for a two-year moratorium on eurobond payments by African sovereigns to free up funds to fight the pandemic. (This would be default, the rest is PR.) https://www.ft.com/content/89c6d60f-5fe9-4b72-b327-4a6eb267a9c9

A quick thread on some of the implications here. There aren't big eurobond principal repayments coming up this year for either Zambia or Angola, as two of the more troubled African sovereigns. But Zambia has a $43m coupon payment coming up *in seven days*.

Also, clearly not every African eurobond issuer would want to join any moratorium so it wouldn't be Africa-wide. South Africa would bite its arm off before defaulting for example.

Lastly, eurobond creditors might even crumble relatively easily, but there is less precedent for co-ordinating debt relief with Chinese official creditors, which could do a lot to reduce debt burdens in 2020 but may be politically very awkward to arrange.