Congo's Odious Debt: External Borrowing and Capital Flight in Zaire Leonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce ABSTRACT During the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo (or Zaire, as Mobutu renamed the country) accumulated a public external debt of roughly $14 billion. At the same time, Mobutu and his associates extracted wealth from the country. By 1990, real capital ¯ight from Zaire amounted to $12 billion. With imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of Zairian ¯ight capital was nearly $18 billion. Congo's successor governments may be able to repudiate liability for the Mobutu regime's debts on the basis of the doctrine of odious debt. Creditors could then seek to recover their losses by identifying and impounding ¯ight capital which was extracted from the country. Some politicians, to hold or regain power, they have not hesitated to call on the power of foreigners. They have declared themselves ready to sell the Congolese people and nation. (Joseph DeÂsire Mobutu, December 1965) The typical number, that the wealth of Mobutu equals the debt of the country, this is taken out of the sky. There's no question that he's taken plenty of money out of the country, but I don't think anybody knows how much, except possibly him, and even he might not know. (IMF ocial, March 1989) 1 INTRODUCTION During Mobutu Sese Seko's 32-year reign, from 1965 to 1997, Congo (or Zaire, as Mobutu renamed the country in 1971) accumulated an external debt of roughly US$ 14 bn. At the same time the living standards of the vast majority of Congo's people deteriorated from an already low base. The World Bank (1992: 218) reports that Zaire's per capita income declined at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent from 1965 to 1990. The United Nations (1994: 165) estimates that by the 1980s, 70 per cent of the country's population lived in absolute poverty. Meanwhile, Mobutu and his associates amassed remark- able personal fortunes; Mobutu's own assets reportedly peaked in the mid- 1980s at US$ 4 bn (Burns et al., 1997). The authors are grateful to Steve Askin and Carole Collins for their advice and assistance. We are also grateful to Funso Afolayan and to participants in the Five-College African Studies Seminar for comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1. The two quotations appear in Askin (1990: 8, 11). Development and Change Vol. 29 (1998), 195±217. # Institute of Social Studies 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Rd, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.