JOHANNESBURG, April 15 (Reuters) – Falling commodity prices have pushed several African countries back into the embrace of the International Monetary Fund, which has an opportunity to push for reforms and inject transparency into opaque economies.
Top of the list is Angola, Africa’s second biggest crude producer and third largest economy, which has not borrowed from the IMF since 2009 and just a few years ago had the Fund all but turning a blind eye to missing billions.
It is hardly alone, with depressed prices for commodities ranging from oil to copper sapping the budgets of African governments and sending them to the IMF, the “lender of last resort” which typically imposes tough conditions for assistance.
Gas-rich Mozambique and gold and oil producer Ghana, hard hit by the sour commodity cycle, both inked financial arrangements with the IMF in 2015, their first in six years, according to the Fund’s website.
Ghana’s was a three-year, $918 million assistance deal signed as its fiscal and current account deficits ballooned.
Africa’s second-largest copper producer, Zambia, started talks in March on an aid programme. Lusaka last signed a financial arrangement with the IMF in 2008.
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