Ghana’s Ministry of Finance and Afreximbank have announced a successful resolution of a $750 million loan facility dispute on Christmas day.
Afreximbank loaned $750 million to Ghana in 2022.
A joint statement issued today December 25, 2025 says, “The Government of the Republic of Ghana, acting through the Ministry of Finance, and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) are pleased to announce successful resolution of the issues surrounding the $750 million facility signed in 2022, to the satisfaction of both parties, enabling both parties to continue to partner for Ghana’s development agenda.”
Afreximbank, one of Africa’s largest multilateral development bank loaned Ghana the funds in July 2022. But when Ghana’s economy became overburdened with debts, the country couldn’t pay back and defaulted. To resolve the debt crisis, the country in agreement with its creditors initiated a debt restructuring programme.
Last year Ghana restructured $13 billion worth of international bonds and debts to official creditors and had to restructure its commercial debt before it can fully emerge from default.
The restructuring affected Afreximbank, but the Bank said it shouldn’t be affected. In the debt restructuring programmwe Ghana classified Afreximbank as a ‘commercial lender’ instead of ‘preferred creditor’. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are classified as ‘preferred creditors’ and so do not take losses. ‘Commercial lenders’ take losses.
The classification led to Afreximbank suffering dowgrades by both Fitch and Moodys rating agencies. The downgrades were driven primarily by concerns over the Bank’s increasing exposure to sovereign borrowers in distress and a disagreement on how these loans should be classified during debt restructuring. The agencies cited Afreximbank’s lending to countries like Ghana, Zambia, and South Sudan undergoing debt restructuring under the G20 Common Framework.
The rating agencies also calculated higher non-performing loan (NPL) ratios for the bank (Fitch estimated 7.1%) than Afreximbank reported (2.44% in Q1 2025), largely due to including the sovereign exposures as non-performing. Fitch further revised its assessment of the bank’s risk management policies to ‘Weak’ from ‘Moderate’, citing low transparency in reporting loan performance relative to its peers.
The core issue is whether Afreximbank’s loans, backed by a treaty among member states, have “preferred creditor” status and are thus exempt from a sovereign’s debt restructuring, a status major development banks usually hold. Ghana, a borrower, challenged the claim, requesting that Afreximbank’s debt be included in its commercial debt restructuring. Afreximbank insisted it is a multilateral institution which, like the IMF and the World Bank, is exempt from taking losses when countries default.
Standing its ground, Afreximbank argued that its founding treaty legally binds member states and provides a framework of intergovernmental cooperation that shields its loans from the typical commercial risk principles applied by the rating agencies and maintained that was not participating in any debt restructuring negotiations and that its financial reporting aligns with International Financial Reporting Standards.
Afreximbank and the African Union’s credit review body, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), however disputed the downgrades, calling the methodologies “flawed” and “erroneous”.
The announcement today simply said the dispute has been settled without giving any details.
By Emmanuel K Dogbevi