IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/devchg/v29y1998i2p195-217.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Congo's Odious Debt: External Borrowing and Capital Flight in Zaire

Author

Listed:
  • Leonce Ndikumana
  • James Boyce

Abstract

During the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo (or Zaire, as Mobutu renamed the country) accumulated a public external debt of roughly $14 billion. At the same time, Mobutu and his associates extracted wealth from the country. By 1990, real capital flight from Zaire amounted to $12 billion. With imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of Zairian flight capital was nearly $18 billion. Congo's successor governments may be able to repudiate liability for the Mobutu regime's debts on the basis of the doctrine of odious debt. Creditors could then seek to recover their losses by identifying and impounding flight capital which was extracted from the country.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonce Ndikumana & James Boyce, 1998. "Congo's Odious Debt: External Borrowing and Capital Flight in Zaire," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 29(2), pages 195-217, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:devchg:v:29:y:1998:i:2:p:195-217
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-7660.00076
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7660.00076
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-7660.00076?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:devchg:v:29:y:1998:i:2:p:195-217. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0012-155X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.