DOI: 10.36347/sjebm.2021.v08i08.008

Pages: 251-263

The objective of this research is to determine the contribution of external public debt on poverty reduction in Cameroon, from 1990 to 2015. The methodological set was inspired from works publish by the IMF in 2003, on the impact of the external public debt on poverty in countries with low income. Considering indicators used by the IMF, in a similar evaluation which are; Life expectancy at birth, Infant mortality rate, and Primary gross enrolment rate, to measure poverty. For our evaluation, the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method implemented under Eviews (analytical software) are used to come out with the results. These results bring out the fact that, the external public debt, has a direct and significant effect on poverty through the per capita income on indicators mention above. It equally affects poverty indirectly through economic growth and development. It is thus suggested an improved debt management and the optimization of the external public debt, with poverty reduction as the target.