The report, released on Tuesday and titled “Still Cooking with a Failed Recipe: A Review of IMF Country Advice on Social Spending, Public Services, Debt, Tax and Gender Equality,” examined 29 International Monetary Fund (IMF) documents across 11 countries between February 2022 and February 2025.
The countries reviewed include Nigeria, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal, Uganda, the United Kingdom, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
According to the report, Nigeria allocates 20.1 per cent of its national revenue to external debt servicing, compared with 4.06 per cent for healthcare and 4.40 per cent for education.
ActionAid described the debt burden as a major obstacle to improving public services, noting that debt servicing exceeds health spending in seven of the eight African countries assessed.
The organisation accused the IMF of failing to adequately address the impact of debt repayments on social spending, arguing that the institution treats debt servicing as a fixed obligation while expecting governments to fund health and education with whatever resources remain.
The report also criticised the IMF’s recommendation for Nigeria to remove fuel subsidies, stating that measures introduced to cushion the impact on vulnerable citizens were insufficient.
According to ActionAid, the IMF acknowledged that compensatory measures for poor households were not scaled up quickly enough, contributing to rising living costs and eventually prompting the government to reintroduce subsidy-related interventions.
The report further claimed that IMF policy advice to Nigeria has remained largely unchanged despite the institution’s stated commitment to social spending and gender equality.
It noted that Nigeria’s public sector wage bill has remained at 1.9 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for six consecutive years, significantly below the African average of 7.6 per cent and the global average of nine per cent.
Despite this, the report said the IMF did not recommend increasing spending on public-sector workers, including teachers, nurses, and doctors.
ActionAid Nigeria Country Director, Andrew Mamedu, criticised what he described as the IMF’s double standards.
“For six years running, the IMF has looked at a wage bill that funds Nigeria’s teachers, nurses, and doctors at less than a quarter of the regional average and found nothing to recommend beyond keeping it frozen.
“Meanwhile, ordinary Nigerians are being asked to absorb a doubling of VAT and the lingering effects of a poorly cushioned subsidy removal. This is not the advice of an institution that has reformed. It is the same recipe, repackaged,” he said.
The report also disclosed that the IMF advised Nigeria to increase its Value Added Tax (VAT) from 7.5 per cent to 15 per cent by 2026 and recommended higher excise duties on tobacco and alcohol.
ActionAid argued that the measures are regressive because they place a heavier burden on low-income households without imposing corresponding taxes on the wealthiest citizens.
The organisation concluded that the IMF remains heavily influential in managing debt crises and described the institution as “the world’s debt collector and lender of last resort.”
It added that despite claims of reform, the IMF’s policies and approach remain largely unchanged, calling for a fundamental rethink of the institution’s role in global economic governance.
