Africa's banking industry

Takeaways from this article from The Economist.

• The country bank penetration rate is disperse, and generally low among various countries. 
• Banks in Africa still face challenge in technology but could pick up because they can install the machine from scratch (cost-to-income is 30%, compared to 50% mark in developed countries)
• Post crisis, local banks have extended their retail network while international banks

Beyond the size, effectiveness of credit intermediation also needs to be assessed. I suspect, most likely, those local banks face not much credit demand. Hence, banking system ends up piling cash at the vault of central bank. In order to survive, banks need to charge high spread between lending rate and deposit rate....