The U.S.Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen said on Monday during a visit to Zambia that it was critically important to restructure Zambia’s debt.

Yellen said that Zambia’s debt overhang was a drag on its whole economy and that China had been a barrier to reaching a resolution on the southern African country’s debt problem.

She said Zambia must address corruption and that President Hakainde Hichilema, who took charge in August 2021, had made progress doing so.

Yellen is on a three-country visit to Africa. In Senegal she said Russia’s war in Ukraine was hitting Africans particularly hard by exacerbating food insecurity.

She also said that the war was putting an unnecessary drag on the continent’s economy.