To achieve a financially healthy banking system, Central Banks and other financial sector regulators in Africa must exercise tighter regulatory authorities, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, said on Wednesday.
The CBN governor spoke at the opening of the 2023 African Central Banks Conference at the Global Leadership Center, Johannesburg, South Africa.
He urged the Governors of Central Banks and other African financial sector regulators to be more vigilant in discharging their regulatory and supervisory roles to forestall any run on banks in their respective jurisdictions.
Speaking on the current global dynamics and specific policy developments in Nigeria to address emerging shocks, Emefiele advised central banks on the continent to draw lessons from the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank in the United States of America, by putting in place regulations that would prevent any run on banks in their countries.
Sharing Nigeria’s experience in regulating banks with participants at the conference, the apex bank’s governor noted the threats posed to the financial system that necessitated the release of new guidelines and regulations to tackle potential infringements.
He said that the new guidelines were to help protect depositors’ funds as well as promote greater transparency in the sector.
Regulators, he said, must be alive to their responsibilities by ensuring that banks under their regulatory watch were financially healthy and do not suffer a similar fate as the Silicon Valley Bank, which, until its collapse recently, catered to many of the world’s most powerful tech investors.
Topics discussed at the conference, which was declared open by the Prime Minister of Namibia, Saara Kuugongelwa, centred around “African Solution for African Problems” and “Africa’s Seat at the Table,” among others.
Other deliberations at the two-day confab, also addressed by Lesetja Kganyago, Governor, Reserve Bank of South Africa, bordered on “Calibrating for a New World Order” and “Unlocking Development Finance and Mobilising Institutional Investors for Development in Africa”.
