Regional fragmentation of banking infrastructure in North African countries

Integration associations on the African continent rarely represent long-term and successful projects. This is due to the fact that the mechanisms of the European or American models of integration are often taken as examples of the mechanisms of interaction between the subjects of integration, which, however, operate under different conditions than those of the African countries. This article verifies the hypothesis that the banking infrastructure of North African countries is subject to market failures in terms of foreign trade financing, which makes the formation of an effective regional integration association difficult. The results show that of all the countries in the North African region, only Morocco and, to a lesser extent, Egypt have a developed banking infrastructure to support trade, although they face a number of difficulties in terms of financial services. At the same time, for Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, with the growth of exports, there is a decrease in the role of the national banking infrastructure, which is expressed in a drop in the indicators of the corresponding items of the consolidated balance sheet of banks. It was also found that during the period 2007-2021, Sudan's foreign trade had almost no correlation with financial support coming from local banks.

banking infrastructure of the North African region, trade finance, integration in African countries