In this 15-minute interview I ask M&G’s Greg Smith, an emerging market debt strategist with a speciality in Africa and formerly a World Bank economist in Zambia, how the continent is coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. We also discuss how worried we should be about the negative headlines coming out of the region over Zambia’s recent default on its international bonds. Is this the start of a wider trend in African defaults? And how is Chinese state power manifesting itself in lending and recoveries in the region?