Photo: Kenyan President William Ruto address the summit
African governments have called for changes to the methodologies used by credit ratings agencies, decrying what they say are biases against them that overstate the continent’s risk.
Major agencies including S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s and Fitch rejected the accusations of regional bias, saying their ratings are based on globally applied, publicly disclosed criteria.
They made the call at the yesterday’s ended Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, attended by more than 30 African government leaders as well as heads of multilateral financial institutions and business executives from across Africa and France , the first France has held in an English-speaking country.
During the summit , African leaders argued that they suffer from an unduly high perception of risk among lenders, which can make credit prohibitively expensive.
“The issue … is not liquidity. It is risk architecture,” Kenyan President William Ruto said in remarks to the Africa Forward Summit in his country’s capital Nairobi on Tuesday.
On January 23, 2026, Afreximbank officially terminated its rating relationship with Fitch Ratings following a prolonged dispute over the agency’s assessment of the bank’s risk and treatment of preferred creditor status.
Afreximbank argued that Fitch’s methodology failed to understand the bank’s mandate, Establishment Agreement, and strong shareholder support. Fitch subsequently downgraded Afreximbank to ‘BB+’ and withdrew coverage.
