African banks have so far been relatively insulated from the wider financial crisis, and results for calendar year 2008 reflect this. However, with plummeting commodities prices and a dearth of foreign external financing so far in 2009, next year's results might not look so rosy.
Of the top 21 sub-Saharan African banks that made it into The Banker's Top 1000 rankings, five were South African, 13 were Nigerian, two were Mauritian and one, EcoBank, was from Togo. Nigeria's banks continued to amass Tier 1 capital in calendar year 2008, making them even stronger than last year, when compared with the traditionally dominant South African Banks. Whereas last year Nigeria's banks made up 34% of total Tier 1 capital from the sub-Saharan banks, this year they made up 43.4%. South Africa's share of total Tier 1 capital fell from 62% in last year's rankings to 52.8%.
