Whenever a government issues sovereign debt in order to borrow, it pays implicitly for every worst-case scenario investors imagine for its currency and interest rates. This unstated buffer is the fear premium: the extra yield charged for a currency collapse or rate shock, no matter how far a government's reforms have gone. It bites hardest across Africa and the wider emerging world, where credible governments pay financing costs shaped by someone else's worst-case imagination rather than their own trajectory. […]