A Debt Pandemic Is Looming In Africa!!!

In the last 15 years, the number of people owing one debt or the other has skyrocketed in Africa and this quite concerning. Before this period, the only people we knew as debtors and owed really large sums of money was the government of countries, but over the years, that has shifted to the people themselves.

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Take for example, in Nigeria where a very large population live in abject poverty and can barely eat twice a day, companies that offer loans often appear to be the messiahs of the people by coming through for them when the going gets though and to be honest, I've also benefitted from the quick accessibility to loans in so many situations. The debts owed by most people come in several forms from airtime debts, to microfinance bank debts, "buy now pay later " etc.

However, the sad thing about these debts are the crazy rates of interests involved which slowly becomes a problems and the methods of retrieval of loan for debtors who fail to pay as at when due. Due to the poor regulatory bodies in most African countries, many of these financial institutions set crazy rates on loans and people often take them ignorantly only to find out later that they shouldn't have taken the loan in the first place. I also mentioned in one of my recent posts about how many of these loan platforms result to threatening the lives of their debtors which is so wrong imo.

My financial advice to my closest friends and family right now is to avoid getting into any kind of debt. Yeah, considering the crazy inflation around the world and some personal financial situations, they may appear to be the only way out but it pays to avoid them completely.