Nigeria declared a state of emergency that will allow the government to take exceptional steps to improve food security and supply, as surging prices cause widespread hardship, Reuters reported. The move will trigger a range of measures, including clearing forests for farmland to increase agricultural output and ease food inflation, Dele Alake, a spokesman for President Bola Tinubu, told reporters late Thursday. It follows the president’s removal of fuel subsidies and exchange-rate reform, which has seen the naira fall by 40% after its peg to the dollar was removed last month.

A pair of central bank decisions next week will shape the outlook for a wobbly global economy that the World Bank warns in a downbeat new assessment is battling stubbornly high inflation amid the pandemic’s aftermath and the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported. The gloomy forecast arrives days after one threat to global growth was eliminated when President Biden signed legislation Saturday to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and avert a potentially catastrophic government default.

Ghana aims to exempt loans from the African Export & Import Bank (Afreximbank) from being restructured, finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta said, as the country seeks new terms on $20 billion in external debt and recovery from a deep economic crisis, Reuters reported. The gold-, cocoa- and oil-exporter, which defaulted on most external debt in December, aims to reduce its external debt repayments by $10.5 billion over the next three years to qualify for the next tranche of a $3 billion loan deal from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "I have to find a way to do it.