I would regard those as frontier markets, with economies much less diverse than South Africa, much more reliant on external financing. The thing that you have to realize is that we have very well developed capital markets in South Africa - something all those countries listed don't, additionally we have a significant local institutional asset based that needs to match liabilities in ZAR - something all those countries listed don't. Hence the majority of Gov financing is covered by local institutions. Our % of hard currency debt to local is also relatively insignificant. (As an aside, yes, I know that we have large current account deficits that need to financed) That being said, ZAR should be compared to other large EM currencies like MXN, BRL, RUB, TRY which are a lot more liquid and traded as proxies for the whole of EM, not the Naira. Look at these on a graph going back 10 years - same trend??? I think so. The effect of USD strength is a tidal wave that washes over any local "significant" events, an in many cases is actually an indirect trigger for many of them. BTW - have a look at what has happened to other EM currencies after the actual downgrade event.
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