Governance infrastructure and indebtedness of African countries: Do regional blocs matter?

• We use data on 37 countries to study institutions/external debt in Africa at the regional bloc level.
• We find a robust negative relation between institutions and external debt in many regional blocs.
• Proximity, intra-regional activity, legal origin, etc. explain the commonality of country blocs.
• These can support debt management that leverages institutions and regional economic integration.

Motivated by the intermediating role of good institutions in enabling growth via external debt financed investment and the touted promise of regional integration for Africa's growth prospect, we use data on 37 countries, over the period 2002–2010, to explore the governance institutions—external indebtedness nexus in Africa, at the regional bloc level. We find a robust negative relation between governance institutions and external indebtedness in East & Horn of Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa; and unclear relationships in North and West Africa regions. Importantly, these baseline results are robust to the consideration of debt write-offs, natural resource rents, and endogeneity. Further, we find that geographic, economic and cultural factors of proximity, intra-regional activity, shared official language, legal origin and dominant religion, largely explain the commonality of Africa's regional blocs of countries. These and other results of the study can support potential external debt management strategy that leverages effective governance institutions and enhanced regional economic integration.