Thanks to debt relief under two programs, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, debt in sub-Saharan Africa was cut by two-thirds by 2008. The relief has given the region a new lease on life. But since 2008, public debt in sub-Saharan countries has been rising at an increasingly rapid pace. By 2016, the subcontinent’s gross public debt to GDP ratio had doubled. The increase in debt should have raised all sorts of flags and triggered triage, but it didn’t. Neither the International Monetary Fund nor the World Bank sounded the alarm.[…]