Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Wale Edun, sounded the alarm on a worsening global debt crisis Wednesday, warning that half of the world’s low-income nations are either already in debt distress or dangerously close to it — as he called for urgent collective action from developing economies.
Edun made the remarks at the Technical Group Meeting of the Group of 24 Nations (G-24) in Abuja, where he also chairs the bloc. While his comments focused broadly on the Global South, Nigeria itself is grappling with a mounting debt burden — public debt has climbed to an all-time high of an estimated $100 billion, with debt servicing consuming 47 percent of government revenue in 2025.
The minister painted a stark picture of the financial strain facing developing nations, noting that the total annual debt repayments made by countries in the Global South now dwarfs both foreign aid and direct investment received from wealthier nations. He added that roughly a quarter of emerging and developing economies have been effectively shut out of international capital markets, making the push to grow domestic revenue more urgent than ever.
“This gathering is an opportunity to reshape the development trajectory of the Global South at a time when global risks are converging faster than institutions can respond,” Edun said.
Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Olayemi Cardoso echoed the urgency, but trained his focus on a different bottleneck — the high cost and sluggishness of cross-border payments. In a keynote address, he argued that the current international payments infrastructure is failing developing nations, with remittance corridors charging fees above 6 percent, settlement delays stretching several days, and compliance requirements that effectively lock out small businesses from global trade.
“Cross-border payments remain too slow, too costly, and too fragmented, especially for developing economies,” Cardoso said, calling for immediate digitalization reforms to bring those costs down and accelerate transaction speeds. He framed the issue not as a technical matter but as a core development priority for G-24 member states.
Setting the tone for the meeting, G-24 Secretariat Director Dr. Iyabo Masha described the current global moment as one of “measured resilience but constrained ambition,” noting that many developing economies are no longer simply trying to recover from past shocks — they are fighting to protect economic stability and fund long-term transformation in an increasingly volatile world.
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