People walk past an image of American dollar bills outside a currency exchange bureau in downtown Nairobi, Kenya

Not all about the BenjaminsPhotograph: Reuters

Aug 6th 2026|4 min read

ON CAIRO ROAD, a bustling commercial strip in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, traders and shoppers once haggled over gadgets, furniture and other goods priced in dollars. For decades the greenback was similarly entrenched across the Zambian economy. From car purchases to business contracts, large transactions were routinely settled in the American currency. Interest rate decisions made by the Federal Reserve in Washington rippled through to the price of Zambian groceries and rents. When Zambia defaulted on its debt in 2020, the dollar’s strength at the time exacerbated the fallout.

A young South-Asian woman typing on a keyboard at her computer desk in a busy office environment with colleagues working in the background

African countries are souring on the dollar