Civil society oversight is the cheapest insurance on state finances, as it allows for independent oversight before it becomes the norm. But since the borrowing government will not volunteer to finance the monitoring, the global decision-makers will have to do it by using the agreement for the recovery of stolen assets and the treatment of the country’s debts.
HARARE — In 2021, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube caused an uproar when he issued more than $15 million in guarantees for private loans made by the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe without seeking parliamentary approval. This is a particularly example of a common public practice in Zimbabwe: committing state resources to non-essential projects that do not provide public benefits. Some of these loans were not repaid, so taxpayers covered the losses.
In April 2022, the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (which I chaired at the time), along with three applicants, asked the Zimbabwe High Court to declare that parliament must approve public debt. previous it happens. In March 2023, the Court ordered the government to draw up a bill within the next 12 months that describes the role of parliament in approving loans and guarantees and establishing procedures for ratification or rejection.
This victory is only possible because of funding. The Open Society Initiative for South Africa, a regional foundation, funds external lawyers who object, as well as our researchers, on a three-year cycle. When the cycle ends, the capacity to fight those legal battles.
The financing model of public accountability in developing countries through grants has begun to collapse. Aid from OECD donors is set to drop by 23.1% in real terms by 2025, the largest annual decline on record. Meanwhile, the government is tightening requirements for registering civil society organizations and limiting which groups can receive funding from abroad. Zimbabwe’s Private Voluntary Organizations Amendment Act, which came into effect in April 2025, allows authorities to deregister civil society organizations and seize their assets without judicial oversight. El Salvador’s Foreign Agents Law, enacted just one month later, imposes a 30% tax on all foreign financing.
The lack of civil society participation will be felt, not least because every proposal to make global finance more sustainable and fair depends on citizens who can read the debt sustainability analysis and force the minister to answer. The Seville Commitment, adopted at the Fourth International Conference on Development Financing last year, calls for strengthening parliamentary oversight of debt, independent audit institutions, and the role of civil society in exposing illicit financial flows. But no one said who paid for the work.
The answer may lie in two types of international instruments: agreements for the recovery of stolen assets and the treatment of state debts. Each can contain a clause mandating that a fixed part of the amount – 5% is a possible starting point – to finance independent supervision of public finances in the recipient country. The money will be protected from executive interference, publicly audited, and guaranteed for the life of the program.
This is done in the agreement to return the asset. In December 2017, Switzerland returned approximately $321 million stolen by former Nigerian President Sani Abacha under an agreement that provided for World Bank monitoring and civil society oversight of how the money was spent. In the same year, the United Kingdom, the United States, and four focal countries—Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Ukraine—adopted the principles of GFAR (Global Forum on Asset Recovery), which makes governments that produce or receive assets transparent and accountable.
So far, however, such monitoring has been considered a matter of courtesy, coupled with the government’s discretion to hold onto stolen funds. Sevilla’s commitment calls for piloting a new approach to asset returns, including a clause in the agreement that states that a third party monitors the money for oversight to prevent interference from recipient governments.
Debt treatment, negotiated in creditor committees and multilateral forums, could adopt a similar approach: channeling debt service savings into an independently regulated fund that supports public financial oversight. Grants will be awarded competitively, published in a database, and externally audited according to criteria written in the settlement.
Creditors have received similar requirements for various categories. In 1998, Uganda secured debt relief under the Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, signaling an anti-poverty program. In 2023, Ecuador completed a debt-for-nature swap in which part of the interest on the new loan pays approximately $12 million per year, for 18.5 years, into a fund to preserve the Galápagos Islands, which is managed by a representative council of government, academia, and business.
The borrowing government will not volunteer to finance the examiner. But when the obligation is written into the settlement, the money can live in the next budget or election. It also informs lenders about the borrower’s disclosure practices.
Oversight is the cheapest insurance in the country’s finances. A group of economists that tracked the revelations of undisclosed debt in 154 countries over the past century found that nearly half of all sovereign defaults coincided with substantial upward revisions to reported public debt. Hidden debt piles up in good times and in bad, when someone checks the books. If public oversight is properly funded, outside inspections begin long before standards and can pave the way for reform.
Consider the winning order of the Zimbabwean High Court. This is an important result that still fails to solve the problem. The bill has been drafted but not gazetted; Court deadline passed without action. Organizations that can fight in court for such enforcement have moved on to other grant-funded work.
In an effort to rapidly overhaul the global financial architecture, policymakers must recognize that improving debt management begins with responsibility at home. At the International Monetary Fund-World Bank Annual Meeting in October, the new Borrowers’ Platform, which seeks to give developing countries a stronger voice in global debt discussions, held its first Governing Council. While proactive coordination between the finance minister and the governor of the central bank, as the official who signed the loan, is important to achieve a sustainable level of debt, but it must be associated with long-term external funding for civil society groups that can implement the word.