Top 10 African Countries With the Smallest IMF Debt

Debt owed to the International Monetary Fund remains an important measure of how much financial support countries have relied on during economic stress. 

Across Africa, several nations still maintain outstanding IMF obligations, while others carry only small balances compared to larger borrowers on the continent.

According to IMF data from early 2025, ten African countries stand out from the rest of the continent for the small size of their outstanding credit. 

Their situations differ: some are island micro-states, others are landlocked kingdoms, and one is an oil producer, but together they illustrate the range of paths a country can take to limit its dependence on the Washington-based institution.

The ten countries

Lesotho sits at the top of this list — or rather, the bottom of the debt ladder. The small mountain kingdom owes just $11.7 million to the IMF, a figure that reflects a governing philosophy of cautious engagement with external creditors. 

Hemmed in by South Africa and heavily reliant on remittances and its garment industry, Lesotho has faced persistent challenges with unemployment and poverty, yet has avoided compounding those pressures with large international liabilities.

The Comoros and São Tomé and Príncipe follow close behind. Both are small island nations, geographically isolated and economically vulnerable, yet each has managed to contain its IMF obligations to under $25 million. 

The Comoros, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, has leaned on diaspora remittances for economic ballast; São Tomé has invested cautiously in tourism and early-stage oil and gas development as alternative revenue streams.

“Three African countries — Botswana, Libya, and Eritrea — have never borrowed from the IMF at all. The ten on this list come closest to that distinction among active members.”

Eswatini, the small landlocked monarchy formerly known as Swaziland, owes approximately $29.4 million ,a figure that speaks to a tradition of domestic revenue reliance and regional financial support rather than large multilateral loans. 

Djibouti, meanwhile, has capitalised on its strategic position near the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, hosting foreign military bases and operating busy commercial ports, which has provided the government with revenue streams that reduce its need for external financing. Its IMF debt stands at around $31.8 million.

The middle of the table

Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest countries by most measures, owes $52.3 million. Its low figure reflects not prosperity but a limited capacity and limited appetite to access large IMF programmes. 

Equatorial Guinea, an outlier in this group as one of sub-Saharan Africa’s significant oil producers, owes $65.8 million. 

Its hydrocarbon revenues have historically reduced the pressure to turn to multilateral lenders, though the global energy transition poses long-term questions for that model.

Cabo Verde, an Atlantic island archipelago with a stable democracy and a tourism-driven economy, holds $72.1 million in outstanding IMF credit. It has engaged with international financing selectively, keeping obligations at a level its economy can comfortably service. 

Somalia, at $79.5 million, is perhaps the most striking entry: a country still rebuilding from decades of conflict, whose relatively low IMF figure reflects the Fund’s own debt relief programmes as much as any deliberate fiscal strategy. 

Finally, Seychelles rounds out the list at $94.3 million. The Indian Ocean archipelago has used IMF credit to support its economy while keeping debt at manageable levels relative to its income.

What low debt does and doesn’t mean

It would be a mistake to read low IMF debt as straightforwardly positive. For some countries on this list, the small figures reflect economic scale, geographic marginality, or limited access to credit, rather than a conscious and replicable policy choice. 

Somalia’s inclusion, in particular, owes more to debt relief and institutional fragility than to sound fiscal management in the conventional sense.

Nevertheless, the pattern does illuminate something meaningful. Countries that avoid accumulating large IMF obligations tend to escape the austerity conditions that typically accompany large programmes, tax increases, cuts to public spending, public sector wage freezes, conditions that have proved deeply unpopular and economically disruptive across the continent. 

Lower debt also means more budgetary flexibility: funds not spent servicing external obligations can, in principle, be directed toward health, education, and infrastructure.

The contrast with the continent’s most indebted borrowers is stark. Egypt alone owes $8.6 billion, and Kenya, Angola, and Côte d’Ivoire each owe more than $2.5 billion. 

Africa’s external debt as a share of GDP has risen sharply since the 2008 global financial crisis, and the IMF’s role as a creditor has only grown in that period. 

The countries on this list represent the other end of that spectrum: smaller, quieter, and, by this one measure at least, considerably less encumbered.