1. Soaring debt Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, UNCTAD warned about the climbing debt burden of African Countries which undermines their ability to provide basic services, such as health care and education. Their debts have not only grown but also become costlier and riskier. Between 2011 and 2019, Africa's debt service more than tripled to $33 billion, which represents between 5% and 13% of the value of their exports. The pandemic has exacerbated the situation, with Africa's debt repayments set to hit $43 billion in 2022. Such a burden will jeopardize their COVID-19 recovery efforts and sap the public funds needed to fight poverty and invest in essential infrastructure, such as roads and hospitals. 2. Export marginalization Africa also remain marginalized in global trade. Their share of global merchandise exports has hovered around just 1% since 2010. And their main exports leave them highly vulnerable to global crises and shocks. Although several African Countries have broadened their export base, as many as 38 of them remain commodity dependent. They rely on primary goods like copper, cotton and oil for over 60% of their merchandise exports. Global commodities’ markets are very volatile, and when prices crash, so do exports, jobs and government revenue. This volatility is a serious threat to many African Countries especially for food and fuel. The impact of the war in Ukraine on global prices for these two products is a stark reminder. 3. Energy poverty UNCTAD calculations show that more than half of the people in Africa still lacked access to electricity in 2019. About 570 million men, women and children in these countries don’t have light at night for reading and aren’t able to charge a mobile phone. The situation is worse in rural areas, with about two thirds of the population (458 million people) living without electricity. And where electricity is available, such as in large cities, access is often unreliable. Access to energy matters now more than ever as African Countries try to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. For example, without reliable electricity, hospitals can’t refrigerate vaccines. This hampers vaccine roll-out efforts. 4. Climate vulnerability African Countries are on the front lines of the climate crisis even though their populations have barely contributed to the global greenhouse gas emissions fuelling global heating. In the past five decades, these vulnerable nations have been home to 69% of the global deaths caused by climate disasters. Yet their cars and industries have produced just 1.1% of the world’s total CO2 emissions. Even their share per person barely reaches 9% of the world’s average. In 2019, the carbon footprint of an average person living in an LDC was 23 times smaller than that of someone in a developed country, such as the United States or a European nation. This “climate apartheid” means that the people least responsible for climate change are the most affected by its consequences.