Savings and Retail Banking in Africa: A Case Study on COVID-19

This report looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed bank customer behavior in Africa, showing that customers there have increased their borrowing from friends and family – helping to ensure they have additional resources available. Published under the the Scale2Save program, the research finds that savings turned out to be the most important source of emergency funding, and play an important role to cover living expenses. 

In addition to the changes in the financial behavior of customers, the report also looks at how the pandemic has affected banks, as well as how the regulators in Africa have responded to COVID-19 during the first few months of the pandemic.