Banking in Africa: A Progress Report

This paper discusses recent progress in financial deepening across Sub-Saharan Africa. Using an array of different data, we document that African banking systems are shallow but stable. African banks are well capitalized and over-liquid, but lend less to the private sector than banks in non-African developing countries. African enterprises and households are less likely to use financial services than their peers in other developing countries. However, there has also been a broad-based process of financial deepening over the past decade, which has benefited African private sectors.