By: Ganiyu Olayinka
The African Union has formally launched the Africa Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) in Mauritius, establishing a continent-focused institution that provides independent, Africa-focused assessments of creditworthiness and offers an additional perspective alongside existing global rating agencies.
The agency was officially launched on 7 October 2026 in Port Louis, Mauritius, under the auspices of the African Union and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which was tasked with leading its operationalisation. The AU says AfCRA is intended to strengthen Africa’s financial architecture, close information gaps, and ensure African sovereigns, sub-sovereigns, and businesses are assessed fairly in international financial markets.
The initiative has its roots in an AU Assembly decision in January 2017, which mandated the APRM to support member states in the field of credit ratings. The initiative subsequently evolved into a proposal for an independent, private-sector-driven and self-sustaining African credit rating agency. In 2024, the AU Executive Council called for the acceleration of its operationalisation, with the APRM taking the lead.
A Case for a Fairer Assessment of Africa
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who chairs the APRM Committee of Focal Points, was represented at the launch by Uganda’s Minister of State for Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Amos Lugoloobi.
Lugoloobi argued that Africa’s challenge was not a lack of economic potential but bottlenecks including weak resource mobilisation and inadequate development of human capital. He said the continent needed adequate and affordable capital and maintained that high borrowing costs were partly linked to how African economies are assessed by international rating agencies.
He said Africa should not avoid scrutiny but should receive assessments that accurately reflect the economic and institutional circumstances in which its countries are developing.
AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf said AfCRA was established to assess the risks facing African economies objectively, stressing that its independence would be critical to its credibility.
APRM Chief Executive Ambassador Marie-Antoinette Rose Quatre said the agency was created against the backdrop of concerns that prevailing assessments did not adequately reflect the size and realities of African economies.
She said Africa needed institutions capable of telling its economic story with rigour and credibility, while stressing that AfCRA was not intended simply to compete with existing international agencies. Its purpose, she said, was to provide independent, credible and Africa-focused assessments.
Why AfCRA Matters
The agency is designed to provide an additional source of credit information for investors rather than replace Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Ratings and S&P Global Ratings.
The AU describes AfCRA as a complementary institution that will provide an African perspective based on African data, expertise and economic realities. Its mandate covers sovereign, sub-sovereign and corporate issuers. The agency is also expected to play a role in developing local-currency and regional capital markets.
The question of how African credit risk is assessed has become increasingly prominent as governments seek to reduce borrowing costs and deepen domestic capital markets. The APRM has produced a series of studies examining the methodologies and rating actions of Moody’s, Fitch and S&P, including a 2026 mid-year review of sovereign ratings across Africa.
The APRM has also argued that greater access to reliable African data and more context-sensitive analysis could improve the quality of credit assessments.
Afreximbank and the Rating Debate
Afreximbank has been an important supporter of the broader initiative. At the launch, Denys Denya, Afreximbank’s Senior Executive Vice President for Finance, Administration and Banking Services, represented the bank’s President and Chairman, Dr George Elombi. Afreximbank’s official records confirm Denya’s position and his participation in the launch alongside the AU leadership.
Denya argued that a continental rating system could provide a more nuanced assessment of African companies and financial institutions operating across several countries. He questioned why companies such as Dangote Group, which operates across African markets, should necessarily be constrained by the credit rating of its home country.
The issue has particular significance for Afreximbank itself. In June 2025, Fitch downgraded the bank’s long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating from BBB to BBB- with a negative outlook. APRM subsequently criticised Fitch’s treatment of certain Afreximbank exposures, while Fitch said its assessment was based on its own methodology and risk analysis.
In January 2026, Afreximbank announced that it had terminated its credit-rating relationship with Fitch, saying the rating exercise no longer reflected what the bank considered a proper understanding of its Establishment Agreement, mission and mandate. APRM subsequently commented on the decision.
The dispute illustrates the wider debate that AfCRA now enters: whether an African institution can provide additional context and analysis while maintaining the independence and methodological rigour expected by international investors.
AfCRA’s Independence
Although AfCRA originated from an African Union initiative, the agency is being structured as a private-sector-driven and independently governed institution, rather than as an AU-owned rating agency.
The APRM says the governance framework is intended to protect the agency’s analytical and operational independence. Its credibility will ultimately depend on whether investors regard its ratings as evidence-based, transparent, technically rigorous, and independent of political pressure.
That independence will be particularly important because the agency will be operating in a market where the established global rating agencies already have significant influence.
Tinubu’s Push for an Africa-Owned Rating Agency
The launch also follows renewed calls from Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for an African-led credit-rating institution.
In an opinion article published by the Financial Times on 16 February 2026, Tinubu argued that African countries were paying too much to borrow and linked this partly to what he called the “Africa premium” – the gap between perceived and actual risk.
Tinubu argued that the assessments of Fitch, Moody’s and S&P have a major influence on Africa’s access to international capital and said an African rating agency could provide an additional assessment based on more timely and locally informed data.
However, he also acknowledged that an African agency would have to earn the confidence of international investors through transparent, comprehensive and credible assessments. He described such an institution as a complement rather than a replacement for the established global agencies.
AfCRA therefore begins operations with a dual challenge: to provide an African perspective on credit risk while demonstrating that its ratings can withstand the same level of scrutiny expected in global financial markets.
Its credibility, independence, and ability to produce ratings trusted by investors will determine whether it becomes a meaningful addition to Africa’s financial architecture.
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