🇵🇰 South Asia — Pakistan climbs out of distress: Moody’s lifts the sovereign to B3 as reserves rebuild
Three years after standing at the edge of default, Pakistan was upgraded from Caa1 to B3 with a stable outlook on 24 August — and it arrives with the receipts: a Eurobond in April, a debut panda bond in May, and interest payments down from 49% of revenue to 35%. Moody’s raised Pakistan’s sovereign rating […]
🇬🇭 West Africa — Ghana is invited back to the Eurobond market and says no: “we are not in a hurry”
Debt-to-GDP at 45%, statutory targets hit ahead of schedule, distress risk cut from high to moderate — and a finance minister who has decided that regaining market access is not the same as using it. Speaking on 24 July 2026, Ghana’s Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson put it plainly: “Today, the market is inviting […]
🇪🇬 North Africa — The Suez zone books $7bn: Egypt stops selling the canal and starts selling its hinterland
The Suez Canal Economic Zone drew $7 billion across 117 projects in the year to 30 June, with its own revenues up 37% — evidence that Egypt’s most valuable waterway asset may turn out to be the land beside it rather than the transit through it. Mostafa Sheikhoun, chairman of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, […]
🇨🇮🇳🇬 West Africa — The Abidjan–Lagos highway breaks ground: $15.6bn to weld five economies into one corridor
A 1,028-kilometre coastal expressway linking Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria finally moves from blueprint to construction in 2026 — ECOWAS’s biggest bet that integration, not borders, drives West African growth. After years of feasibility studies, the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Highway is set to begin construction in 2026, with completion targeted for 2030. The 1,028-kilometre […]
🇰🇿 Central Asia — Kazakhstan cashes in on the Middle Corridor: a $10bn rail bet and an IPO to match
Trans-Caspian freight has climbed nearly sixfold since 2020, and Astana is now preparing to float its national railway to fund $10 billion of track, ports and ships — turning the route that bypasses Russia into a listed asset. The Middle Corridor — formally the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) — runs from China through Central […]
🇸🇦 Gulf — NEOM’s great reset: Saudi Arabia trades a desert utopia for data centres and a Red Sea port
With The Line frozen until after 2030 and roughly $16 billion budgeted just to exit its own contracts, Riyadh is quietly rebuilding NEOM around Oxagon’s data centres and a container port designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. For nearly a decade, NEOM was Saudi Arabia’s most extravagant promise: a $500 billion futuristic region anchored […]
Adam Glapiński
President of the National Bank of Poland (NBP)
🇪🇹 East Africa — Ethiopia caps its Eurobond haircut at 12% — and quietly reopens the door to global capital
A 12% haircut, a 6.15% coupon and a novel warrant close Africa’s last pandemic-era sovereign default — and reset the template for frontier restructurings. On June 29, 2026, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Finance reached an agreement in principle with an Ad Hoc Committee of institutional bondholders controlling roughly 45% of its sole $1 billion Eurobond, closing […]
🇦🇿 Caucasus — Baku, the silent winner of the Eurasian redesign: how Azerbaijan is monetizing TRIPP
Gas flowing to sixteen markets and a 74% U.S.-owned corridor through Armenia are turning Baku into the logistical hinge between Central Asia and Europe. If Armenia is the political piece of the Caucasian redesign, Azerbaijan is the economic one — and it’s moving with visible discipline. In Q1 2026, Azerbaijan produced 12.6 billion cubic meters […]
🇵🇱 Central Europe — Poland’s growth-without-cash paradox: the hard cohabitation between Tusk and Nawrocki
Europe’s fastest-growing large economy is booming on EU funds and defence spending — yet a Tusk–Nawrocki cohabitation is quietly financing the gap with debt. Poland in 2026 displays one of the most interesting macro-political contradictions in Europe: the economy is growing faster than almost anywhere else on the continent, EU funds are arriving in record […]
🇨🇮 West Africa — Côte d’Ivoire turns cocoa into an industrial machine while Ouattara seeks a fourth term
The world’s top cocoa exporter is racing to process half its beans at home, betting that industrialisation — not raw commodities — secures its lead in West Africa. Côte d’Ivoire is no longer just the world’s largest cocoa exporter — it’s beginning to stop being only that. The IMF projects real GDP growth of 6.4% […]
🇰🇷 East Asia — Lee Jae-myung channels ₩150 trillion into AI and chips: the Korean model of directed capitalism
A ₩150 trillion state-backed fund for AI and chips has driven the KOSPI to a record 8,000 — Seoul’s proof that industrial policy still works. If Japan’s bet is macroeconomic, Korea’s is industrial. President Lee Jae-myung has launched the Public Growth Fund, a public-private vehicle worth 150 trillion won (≈$104 billion) to be deployed over […]