Financial Sector in Africa

While access to financial services is indispensable for facilitating business operations, little information on the African financial sector has been made available in Japan with the number of cases limited for Japanese financial institution’s expansion into Africa.

The African financial sector has not necessarily been developed sufficiently.However, as important items for private sector development, various projects for developing the financial sector and improving financial infrastructure and services in Africa have been implemented and begun to produce good results. The advancement of information and communications technologies and the diffusion of mobile phones have enabled mobile remittance and banking, achieving dramatic improvements in financial access. Efforts to improve financial access have also been ongoing, including microfinance and public financial institutions’ support for SMEs and petty enterprise companies. In the near future, Japanese financial institutions are expected to expand into Africa and participate in or acquire local banks, as they are doing in Asia now.

This section will provide information about African financial sector development mainly from the viewpoint of improving financial access for Japanese people and companies doing business in Africa and introducing model cases of business opportunities for Japan’s financial sector and business people.