The Jubilee Report, commissioned by the Vatican and supported by a cadre of global economic experts, presents a stark and damning indictment of the current debt crisis afflicting the Global South-especially Africa. It articulates well-known culprits: volatile capital flows, creditor-biased legal frameworks in Western jurisdictions, ineffective debt sustainability assessments, and global financial institutions that entrench rather than alleviate structural inequities. Yet, for all its moral gravitas and diagnostic accuracy, the report’s most pressing flaw lies not in what it observes, but in what it recommends-a renewed call for international consensus and cooperation in a geopolitical environment utterly hostile to such ideals.

The crisis is urgent and existential. Since 2013, public debt in African nations has outpaced economic growth. Today, at least 25 African countries spend more on servicing external debt than on essential sectors like health and education. These nations are being suffocated by interest payments that crowd out vital investments in climate resilience, education, healthcare, and job creation for a youth population that, by 2050, will represent 35% of the global total.

The Jubilee Report’s central prescription-another heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative-demands coordinated action from a fragmented web of creditors: traditional Paris Club members, newer bilateral lenders like China, and private bondholders who now hold over 40% of low-income countries’ debt. Yet history provides little assurance such coordination will ever materialize. The first HIPC initiative, while providing partial relief, failed to prevent debt reaccumulation because it left intact the global structures that breed fiscal dependence. The Common Framework, another recent initiative designed to streamline debt restructuring, has similarly floundered under the weight of creditor infighting and noncompliance. There is no compelling reason to believe a new round of global reform will fare better.

Even if the political will existed, the institutional........

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