Why have IMF bailouts in Africa led to small improvements in credit-worthiness? In 2017, nine out of 21 Fitch-rated African sovereigns were under disbursing financial arrangements with the IMF. And while these programs have led to improvements in credit worthiness by bridging their financing gaps, these have been relatively few, according to the Financial Times. These come down to several factors, including the interventions often “crowding-in” other creditors and also serve to avert capital outflows by domestic agents, through the so-called “catalytic effect.” In some cases the size of IMF support can be revised upwards in response to specific shocks while the programme is still under implementation. In other cases, failure to meet the milestones of IMF programs has led to downgrades, such as with Mozambique in 2016. Under certain circumstances, IMF programs could also negatively affect perceived creditworthiness. This is typically the case if the fund requires a “bail-in” — if a sovereign debt is deemed unsustainable under the IMF’s debt sustainability analysis, the legal framework of the fund prevents it from providing financial assistance unless the issue is addressed. Addressing the question itself comes with its own problems of analysis. Pinpointing the extent of the IMF program’s influence on improved credit-worthiness is difficult, and the long term analysis is hard to gauge.