Africa already has pan-African banks, monetary unions, regional markets, payment systems and a growing institutional savings sector. Yet credit, guarantees, financial information and capital do not yet flow across its borders with the ease that this framework should enable. How far are we prepared to push integration?
An African company can now manufacture in one country, sell in another, open a subsidiary or win a contract beyond its borders. Its financing does not always follow with the same ease. A guarantee may lose its validity. Payments can sometimes become slower or more expensive. Information already known to the bank must be provided again. The same project may be subject to different tax or regulatory treatment depending on the territory in which it is carried out.
It is in this gap between the Africa that produces and the Africa that finances that a key part of the challenge of financial integration lies.
Financial integration remains uneven and, at times, patchy. There are still gaps to be bridged to enable credit, guarantees, data, liquidity and projects to cross borders more smoothly.
From 17 to 19 September 2026, Brazzaville hosted the 4th Symposium of the Professional Association of Credit Institutions of Congo and the 2026 Forum of the Club of African Bank and Financial Institution Executives. Bankers, supervisors, government representatives, development banks, professional organisations and private-sector stakeholders gathered to discuss three closely related topics: regional integration, infrastructure financing and financial resilience.
The event took place a few months after the 61st Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank Group, which were also held in the Congolese capital. At the opening of the Forum, Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso drew parallels between the two events.
The AfDB Annual Meetings had raised the question of the scale of resources required to transform the continent. The Banking Forum took this discussion a step further in a more directly operational manner: once the need has been established, how can it be financed and, above all, how can the resources be channelled to the businesses, infrastructure and regions that need them?
From architecture to circulation
Africa has built a great deal over the past few decades.
CEMAC and UEMOA each have a central bank, a regional supervisor, payment systems, money markets and financial markets. African banking groups have expanded into several countries. Development banks, insurance companies, pension funds and institutional investors are playing a more significant role. Fintechs have accelerated payments, broadened access to certain services and demonstrated that it is possible to rapidly reduce the costs and processing times of many transactions.
Jonas Komlan Siliadin is an expert in governance, risk and compliance within the banking and insurance sectors. He is an Associate Consultant at Carmen Dall.
African financial integration is therefore not starting from scratch.
The opening address by Marcel Ondele, Secretary-General of COBAC, helped to put this development into perspective. There remain considerable needs in the energy, transport, digital, agriculture, industrialisation, housing and SME financing sectors.
At the same time, financial systems have developed, and their participants have diversified.
The challenge increasingly centres on the mobilisation, transformation, allocation and flow of resources.
A regional licence may still be subject to national formalities. A cross-border transaction may be subject to different tax treatments depending on where it is structured. Similar accounting frameworks do not eliminate all difficulties relating to comparison or consolidation. A bank may know its client inside out in one country yet, elsewhere, have to repeat part of the work already carried out. Ultimately, integration is also measured by these factors: the time required for a transaction, its cost, the recognition of a guarantee, or the ability to support a client when their business crosses a border.
Large-scale regional frameworks still coexist with a multitude of small administrative, tax, accounting or prudential barriers. Each one may seem insignificant. Taken together, however, they end up imposing a real cost on businesses and financial institutions.
Jonas Komlan Siliadin is an expert in governance, risk and compliance within the banking and insurance sectors. He is an Associate Consultant at Carmen Dall.
Financing the economy as it operates
Private-sector representatives present in Brazzaville steered the discussions back to this everyday reality.
A business has different needs depending on whether it needs to finance a few months’ working capital, build up stock, fulfil a contract, acquire equipment or prepare for regional expansion. Financial instruments should be better tailored to these situations, without compromising risk management requirements.
The Forum took place under the High Patronage of the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, Anatole Collinet Makosso.
For an SME, a lengthy processing time, an ill-suited guarantee or a confusing documentation procedure can jeopardise an order, delay an investment or undermine a commercial relationship.
Late payments by the public sector also featured prominently in the discussions. When a business has to wait several months for payment for services already provided to a government department or public enterprise, its cash flow deteriorates. This difficulty ultimately affects its relationship with the bank and can turn into a credit risk, even though the viability of the business itself is not necessarily in question.
In this context, the issue of bankability deserves to be considered more broadly. It is not limited to assets that can be offered as collateral. The credibility of future cash flows, the soundness of contracts, the quality of financial information, the predictability of the tax environment and the distribution of risks are all equally important factors in the assessment of a project.
Infrastructure financing requires this line of thinking to be taken a step further. Commercial banks remain indispensable, but their resources do not allow them to fund on their own projects involving very large sums and with maturities spanning fifteen, twenty or thirty years.
Depending on the circumstances, financing must be able to bring together commercial banks, development banks, guarantee schemes, capital markets, insurance companies, pension funds, public-private partnerships and appropriate project structures. Within this framework, the bank does not merely lend; it must also structure, arrange, syndicate, advise and bring together, around a single project, investors with differing investment horizons and risk-taking capacities.
Behind these arrangements lies a long-standing question that has become more pressing: to what extent can savings generated on the continent contribute further to financing its own transformation?
A market also exists through its liquidity
The depth of financial markets sheds further light on this issue.
In several parts of Africa, a significant proportion of securities are purchased to be held to maturity. This choice is perfectly understandable from an investor’s perspective. However, it reduces trading on the secondary market, limits the formation of benchmark prices and maintains relatively low liquidity.
The consequences are tangible. Companies have fewer alternatives to bank credit, and institutional investors are more reluctant to commit long-term funds when they know that an early exit will be difficult.
Marcel Ondele, Secretary-General of COBAC.
The approaches discussed in Brazzaville are well known: broadening the investor base, more actively engaging insurance companies and pension funds, attracting new issuers, developing financial literacy and better facilitating secondary markets.
The issue also arises within the banking system. Some institutions may have significant liquidity, whilst others regularly seek refinancing from the central bank. The interbank market exists, though funds do not always circulate within it with the depth one might expect from an integrated financial market.
This observation goes beyond the mere movement of money. Liquidity is therefore just one form of financial circulation amongst others. For an integrated market to function effectively, money must not be the only thing crossing borders. Collateral, data, financial information, insurance mechanisms and a proportion of the risks must also be able to cross borders more freely.
The Forum took place under the High Patronage of the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, Anatole Collinet Makosso.
What digital technology enables, and what it leaves unchanged
Financial technologies have already profoundly changed practices.
The presentation by Anco Marzio Lenardon, Vice-President of Ckub, was particularly noteworthy.
Advances in payments, customer identification, data analysis, fraud detection and the distribution of financial services have bridged gaps that once seemed insurmountable. Time-consuming and costly transactions can now be carried out almost instantly.
However, interoperability deserves to be considered beyond the realm of payments alone. It must also encompass data, KYC, compliance, settlement, risk management, cyber security and, at the end of the chain, the customer experience.
If just one of these links remains within a national, manual or legally uncertain procedure, it can significantly reduce the benefits gained elsewhere through technology.
This is where digital technology reaches its limits. It enables a great deal, sometimes very quickly, but certain barriers are not of a technological nature.
Interconnection also introduces its own vulnerabilities. As systems become more open, a system failure, a cyberattack, a payment incident or a governance weakness can spread beyond its point of origin. Business continuity, cyber security, data quality and crisis exercises are now integral to the process of financial integration.
The panel on resilience emphasised, in this regard, that financing the economy requires banks capable of taking risks without jeopardising their own stability.
The lack of political will
As the discussions progressed in Brazzaville, one limitation became increasingly clear.
Many technical solutions are already known. Payment systems can be interconnected. Platforms are capable of handling multiple currencies and regulatory environments. Pan-African banks have gained substantial experience in cross-border operations. Regulators have cooperation mechanisms at their disposal. Guarantee and risk-sharing instruments exist.
What remains is now often less a matter of a lack of solutions than of the difficulty in taking the decisions that would enable them to be rolled out widely, made compatible or implemented across national borders.
To put it simply, there is a lack of political will.
This shortfall does not always stem from a lack of commitment on the part of governments. Rather, it is evident in the gap between the ambitions regularly expressed and the pace at which certain barriers are actually removed. It also stems from the difficulty of reconciling integration with legitimate concerns regarding sovereignty. National circumstances differ, as do economic balances. But deeper integration necessarily implies that, at some point, certain decisions must be considered beyond national borders, that certain rules must converge, and that certain mechanisms must be recognised from one country to another.
It is at this level that professional organisations have a role to play.
The Club of African Bank and Financial Institution Executives, APEC and other professional associations do not make decisions on behalf of governments, central banks or supervisory authorities. Their position does, however, enable them to identify the difficulties faced by operators, assess their impact and translate this experience into proposals that are sufficiently specific to inform the dialogue with decision-makers.
This leaves a question of method: how can we ensure that these findings do not simply join the long list of recommendations that come to nothing?
In Brazzaville, the question of the post-Forum period was raised from the outset. The Ministry of Finance, the Budget and the Public Portfolio, together with the organisers and professional organisations, supported a follow-up approach that distinguishes between measures falling within the remit of national authorities, those requiring regional consultation, and those that financial institutions can undertake themselves. The challenge now is to ensure the recommendations are followed up in a concrete manner, with clearly identified responsibilities and deadlines.
There is, of course, no guarantee that the obstacles will be removed quickly. The value of this approach lies elsewhere: it forces us, after the speeches have been made, to return to what has actually been decided, simplified, trialled or made possible.
African financial integration is advancing through regional unions, banks, markets, payment systems, development institutions and digital innovations. Its progress remains uneven and, at times, halting. It still lacks the necessary channels for credit, guarantees, data, liquidity and projects to cross borders more seamlessly.
Most of these channels are well known. Opening them up now depends, to a large extent, on the political will and the capacity of public institutions, regulators and professionals to set out specific commitments, clearly defined responsibilities and effective monitoring.
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Financial integration put to the test of political will
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