Economics & Currency
Debt, currency, fiscal policy and IMF programmes — and how each reshapes the unit economics of African tourism enterprises and destination receipts. The Corridor Index measures the proportion of tourism receipts that stay within national accounts versus the proportion that exits through foreign ownership, imported supply chains and offshore intermediaries.
African states need tourism's dollars to pay their debts. So they build tourism for the dollar, not for themselves.
As debt and foreign-exchange pressures intensify, African governments increasingly need tourism to generate the dollars that keep their economies moving. What happens when an industry is built to earn foreign currency rather than to build domestic wealth? Sub-Saharan Africa's external debt service hit roughly a hundred billion dollars in 2025 and 2026, the heaviest on record, and in Kenya close to sixty percent of tax revenue goes to servicing debt. This issue argues that debt is the force sitting underneath every value leak this series has traced.
Read the analysis →Read by tourism ministries, hotel investors and the analysts who advise them.
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