The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, has issued a sobering warning regarding the financial health of developing nations, noting that approximately half of the world’s low-income countries are either currently in debt distress or rapidly approaching it. Speaking at a Technical Group Meeting of the G-24 Nations in Abuja, Edun highlighted a troubling reality where the cost of servicing these debts now far outweighs the actual inflow of foreign investments and development assistance.
While Nigeria is technically classified as a lower-middle-income country by the World Bank, the domestic debt situation remains a point of intense discussion. Reports indicate that Nigeria’s public debt has climbed to an all-time high of approximately $100 billion, with the debt-service-to-revenue ratio estimated at 47 percent for 2025. This means nearly half of the nation’s earnings are being swallowed by interest payments and loan settlements.
Edun pointed out that many emerging economies have effectively been locked out of international capital markets. This loss of access has made the drive for internally generated revenue more urgent than ever. He described the current period as a time of converging global risks, where the challenges are moving faster than the institutions designed to solve them, making it necessary for the Global South to reshape its own development path.
Adding to the conversation, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Olayemi Cardoso, shifted the focus to the high cost of moving money across borders. He criticized the current state of international payments, describing them as too slow, expensive, and fragmented for developing nations. According to Cardoso, global remittance costs often exceed 6 percent, with settlement delays that can last several days. These inefficiencies, he noted, effectively cut off millions of small and medium enterprises from global trade opportunities.
For the CBN Governor, modernizing digital payment systems is not just a technical upgrade but a major macroeconomic priority. He explained that for G-24 economies, these bottlenecks translate directly into higher costs for foreign exchange and trade. He praised the vision of the G-24 leadership, currently chaired by Mr. Edun, for pushing a transition toward digital finance that could foster shared prosperity across member nations.
Echoing these concerns, Dr. Iyabo Masha, the Director and Head of the G-24 Secretariat, noted that the meeting comes at a time of “constrained ambition” for the global economy. She observed that for many developing countries, the goal has shifted from simply recovering from past shocks to trying to protect basic economic stability in an increasingly volatile world. The consensus among the leaders is clear: without urgent structural changes and cheaper ways to move capital, the weight of debt and inefficient systems will continue to hold back the world’s most vulnerable economies.
