Timeline of African countries enactment of Freedom of Information Acts
As of 2021, only 10 African countries have enacted a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act with three of these countries enacting theirs in 2011. South Africa was the first country on the continent to enact a FOI act in 2001.
English dominates globally with 1.5 billion speakers, nearly 300 million more than Mandarin Chinese.
Asian languages are highly represented, with Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Indonesian, Urdu, Japanese, Marathi, Vietnamese, Telugu, and Turkish making up over half of the top 20.
Spanish and French stand out as major global languages, reflecting both native speakers and strong international adoption. African languages are emerging on the global stage, with Nigerian Pidgin (120.7M) and Hausa (94.4M) among the top 20.
The gap between top and bottom languages in the ranking is wide. English has over 15 times more speakers than Turkish, which closes the top 20 list.
From 1970 through the early 2000s, Egypt’s debt interest payments hovered mostly under $1.5 billion, with fluctuations tied to global oil shocks and debt rescheduling.
Payments remained relatively moderate, ranging between $0.7–$1.0 billion annually.
Following Egypt’s 2016 IMF programme and rising external borrowing, payments jumped dramatically, climbing from $1.53 billion in 2016 to $6.13 billion in 2022.
Interest payments hit an all-time high of $9.47 billion in 2023, underscoring the heavy burden of Egypt’s rapid debt accumulation and exposure to global financing costs.
