Victor Murinde
Château Lafarge
Route des Milles
13290 Les Milles
Jean-François Carpantier : jean-francois.carpantier[at]univ-amu.fr
Eric Girardin : eric.girardin[at]univ-amu.fr
The Pan-African banking revolution is in full swing. Since the early 1990s, the African financial landscape has dramatically changed, with indigenous African banks expanding and going cross-border, with hubs in Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and South Africa. In this paper, we study how the recent rise of Pan-African cross-border banks affects the level of bank competition in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), particularly the ultimate impact on access to bank finance by firms in WAEMU. We estimate and test plausible models using hand-collected bank level data from all WAEMU countries and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys data, 2005-2016. We find that the presence of pan-African banks in the WAEMU enhances banking sector competition. Also, we find that cross-border banks are associated with improvements in firm access to bank finance. Unequivocally, these Pan-African banks have boosted financial inclusion in WAEMU. Our findings are robust to alternative empirical specifications and competing measures of key variables.
Victor Murinde (PhD, FRSA) is AXA Professor of Global Finance and Founding Director of the Research Centre for Global Finance, at the School of Finance and Management, SOAS University of London. He has contributed over 100 research papers to the finance and economics literature. According to the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF2014), his research on “Shaping Bank Regulatory Reforms in Africa” was recognized for exceptional impact.
He is the Principal Investigator of a DFID-ESRC research project on “Inclusive Finance”, 2016-2021, leading a consortium of: SOAS University of London; University of Birmingham; Columbia University; University of Sussex; University of Nottingham; ODI London; University of Groningen; Laval University; University of Ghana, Legon; & the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC). He is also Co-Investigator on “China’s financial system towards sustainable growth: The role of innovation, diversity and financial regulation”, funded by ESRC and the China National Science Funding Council (NSFC). His other current roles include: Chair of Group C (Finance) for the AERC; and Visiting Professor of Financial Economics at the School of Economics, University of Nairobi.
He was the founding Director of the African Development Institute, at the African Development Bank (2011-2014); he was also Chair, Econometric Society, Africa Region Standing Committee (2014-2018).
