Africa's own credit rating agency launches today in Mauritius

Today in Port Louis, Mauritius, the African Union officially launches the Africa Credit Rating Agency — an African-owned institution built to rate African governments and companies with African context. The idea has been nearly a decade in the making, since a 2017 AU mandate, and it is designed to complement — not replace — Moody's, S&P, and Fitch. The stakes are real: only 32 of Africa's 55 countries carry ratings from the big three, and unfair ratings are estimated to cost the continent $74.5 billion a year in extra borrowing costs. If AfCRA earns the world's trust, as Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu put it at the launch, the cheapest money on the continent could finally come from the fairest assessments.