Subprime savannah
Trouble is stalking many of Africa’s banks
AFRICA’S financial firms can claim many innovations, from M-Pesa, a pioneering Kenyan mobile-money service, to the life insurance for people with HIV offered by All Life, a South African firm. To these can be added the first social-media bank run. Chase Bank Kenya, the country’s 11th-largest (unrelated to America’s JPMorgan Chase), was taken over by regulators in April after word of its impending collapse spread on Twitter and WhatsApp, spurring panicked withdrawals.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Subprime savannah”
From the July 23rd 2016 edition
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