(Bloomberg) -- The US Federal Reserve’s effort to rein in inflation is needed to stymie price gains from accelerating globally, the governor of the central bank of Rwanda said.

US policy makers raised interest rates by three quarters of a percentage point last week for the third straight time and forecast they would keep hiking in coming months to curb the highest inflation rate in nearly 40 years. Aggressive tightening by the Fed may drag the US economy into recession, weighing on global growth and curbing price increases around the world.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s actions “will affect the global economy in general,” National Bank of Rwanda Governor John Rwangombwa said in an interview at his office in Kigali, the nation’s capital. “But the alternative would’ve been worse. If these decisions are not taken and we end up with high inflation that hurt long-term economic prospects, then that would have been worse.”

Rwangombwa’s comments contrast with those of other emerging market officials who’ve have blamed Western central banks for misjudging price growth as transitory and now having to do a lot more to get the same impact. Last month, Central Bank of Kenya Governor Patrick Njoroge said the rapid rate hikes by the Fed could push the global economy “deep into recession,” while Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said investors lured by higher rates in developed nations are pulling money out of developing markets.

Read: Hunger and Blackouts Are the Start of an Emerging Economy Crisis

From Sri Lanka to Ghana, nations have been forced to default or restructure their debts this year. Ghana, which suffered one of the worst selloffs in Africa this year, saw its eurobonds fall to record lows on Monday. The yields on Rwanda’s eurobonds maturing in 2031 at 10.3% are near a record.

Rwangombwa expects the Rwandan central bank’s 1.5 percentage points of rate increases this year to help slow inflation. By the second half of 2023, inflation will be in the central bank’s corridor of 2% to 8%, he said. 

Rwandan annual inflation accelerated to 15.9% in August, the fastest pace in more than a decade.

“I know currently there’s going to be suffering because we are taking decisions that are harsh to deal with,” Rwangombwa said. “But longer term we expect things to normalize.”

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