Ghana plans to issue Africa’s first social bonds with $2B sale

Ghana would be pioneering social bonds in Africa, seizing on an instrument that’s boomed since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ghana is planning to issue green and social bonds of up to $2 billion by November, which would make it the first African country to sell debt to fund development programs. The West African economy, which is planning to borrow up to $5 billion on international markets this year, would use the proceeds from these sustainable bonds to refinance debt used for social and environmental projects and pay for educational or health, Ghanaian Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta said in an interview in the capital, Accra. “The expectation is that the bonds will be issued in the fall and the maximum can be $2 billion,” after Ghana already sold $3.03 billion in March out of the $5 billion for which it has budget approval, Ofori-Atta said. Out of the total, $3.5 billion will be used to refinance debt already raised. “Our actual new debt will be $1.5 billion,” he said.