Mauritius will host the headquarters of the Africa Credit Rating Agency, a new continental initiative to provide alternative assessments of repayment risk that will start operating by the second quarter of 2026. “AfCRA will be a fully African-owned and private-sector entity,” Marie-Antoinette Rose-Quatre, chief executive officer of the African Peer Review Mechanism — an African Union structure — told an AU conference in Johannesburg on Thursday. Rose-Quatre acknowledged it was behind schedule and said the agency would issue its first rating by June 2026. The new agency will focus on local-currency debt ratings to support the development of domestic capital markets and reduce foreign currency risk in Africa. “Our continent’s health systems cannot be resilient if our financial systems are fragile,” Rose-Quatre told the AU conference, which will discuss how to bridge Africa’s health financing gap.