Feature/OPED
African Leaders Must Prioritise Climate Risks—Verkooijen
By Kester Kenn Klomegah
In this insightful and wide-ranging interview, Professor Patrick Verkooijen, Chief Executive Officer of Global Center on Adaptation discusses the organization’s establishment, its main objectives, challenges and plans for the future.
The Global Center on Adaptation in Africa (GCA Africa), based at the African Development Bank (AfDB), has launched the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program to mobilize $25 billion to scale up transformative actions on climate adaptation. It hopes to mobilize funds and bridge the financing gap for climate adaptation across Africa. Here are the interview excerpts:
What does the setting up of the Global Center on Adaptation mean for Africa?
Africa is on the frontline of our climate emergency. Five out of the 10 world’s most climate-vulnerable countries are in Africa. Contributing a meagre 5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Africa is more victim than a contributor to climate change, with the bulk of its emissions deriving from deforestation and poor land-use practices. Climate change is already negatively affecting the continent’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
Its impacts are showing up in extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heatwaves affecting most of the continent with severe economic consequences. Hurricanes Idai and Kenneth in 2018 that hit Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi affected over 3 million people, led to the death of over a thousand people and damaged infrastructure worth about $2 billion.
Compounding the already enormous climate challenges, COVID-19 has ushered in an era of multiple, intersecting systemic shocks, and one of its casualties has been our capacity to adapt and respond to escalating climate risks.
Investment in climate adaptation fell in 2020, even as more than 50 million people were affected. There is no doubt the adaptation challenge for Africa is extraordinary. For us, although the adaptation challenge is a global agenda, our priority is Africa.
We must make up for lost ground and lost time by accelerating action on climate adaption and resilience. Climate change did not stop because of COVID-19, and neither should the urgent task of preparing humanity to live with the multiple effects of a warming planet. If the virus is a shared global challenge so too should be the need to build resilience against future shocks.
In September last year, in the midst of the pandemic, we virtually launched our Africa office hosted by the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Many African Heads of State and Government participated – they understand how vital accelerated adaptation action is because they are living with the impacts of climate change every day. Our rationale is that it doesn’t make sense to have an Africa office in isolation. We also have offices in Beijing and Dhaka because we think solutions that work well in South Asia, for example, could potentially also be translated to Africa and vice versa.
Do you target regions and different segments of the population in Africa? How do you determine and direct the activities of the GCA-Africa?
If we fail to include fairness and equity in how we adapt to a warming planet, we risk pushing millions of more people into poverty. We know how that story ends – with more conflict, migration and instability. With that in mind, we work closely with our partners including the African Adaptation Initiative and the African Development Bank to ensure our activities are directed towards where the need is greatest. Partnering with existing networks, platforms and organizations ensure that we don’t duplicate existing resources but can play a role in effectively filling the gaps that exist.
Right now, global, regional, national, subnational and local entities are working simultaneously, and in parallel to support adaptation actions and many important initiatives exist. However, the speed and scale of adaptation action is grossly insufficient to meet the demand and many stakeholders are not connected to the resources, knowledge, expertise or support others can offer them.
GCA is key to bridging this gap while ensuring at the same time that best practices can be replicated and scaled up in order to catalyse progress towards resilience in the most effective and efficient way.
Africa’s development – be it in infrastructure, agricultural production, urban development, and youth empowerment – can have a different path from other regions. Africa can have a development that is based on a deep understanding of climate risks for planning, resilient approaches with nature and people at the centre, and continuous innovations in technology, financing, and governance for a climate-smart-adapted future.
What are the long-term priority objectives here? But in the short-term, what projects would you tackle in Africa?
The short-term objective, in terms of the programs, is to make sure that when COVID-19 support packages are developed — and they are being developed in real-time by the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and other partners — they have resilience or adaptation action embedded in them.
Current estimates of the cost of climate change to Africa are between $7 – $15 billion per year. African countries are projected to experience clear detrimental macroeconomic consequences from climate change over the coming decades. The IMF estimates that this cost could rise to $50 billion by 2040, about 3% of the continent’s GDP. It is estimated that climate change could result in lower GDP per capita growth ranging, on average, from 10 to 13 per cent, with the poorest countries in Africa displaying the highest adaptation deficit. So, it’s important we act, and we act now.
Let me give an example. As part of the recovery package in Africa and other continents, there is a lot of investment in infrastructure. We want to make sure that these investments have climate risk embedded in their design and hence in their implementation and maintenance. We don’t want to build infrastructure anymore which will be destroyed when the next floods come.
For us, there is a very simple business case, over and above a moral argument, that investing in adaptation is good economics. We think that it is absolutely vital that, in the development of these new infrastructure projects or agriculture projects, that the climate lens is being applied consistently, and that is what we are planning to do in Africa long-term.
We are developing tools, guidelines, methodologies, and innovation programs for governments and development partners to do precisely that. You cannot develop properly without taking climate into consideration. There is this integrated approach that is not always applied, not only in Africa but also across the globe. That is what we are working on.
Since the start of this initiative, what would you consider as your main achievements on the continent? How did you overcome the initial challenges in order to get these positive results?
The urgency of the compounded COVID-19 and climate crises is compelling a new and expanded effort to accelerate momentum on Africa’s adaptation efforts.
At the GCA, we are joining forces with the African Development Bank to use their complementary expertise, resources and networks to develop and implement a new bold Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) to galvanize climate-resilient actions through a triple win approach to address COVID-19, climate change, and the economy.
The AAAP will contribute to closing Africa’s adaptation gap, support African countries to make a transformational shift in their development pathways by putting climate adaptation and resilience at the centre of their critical growth-oriented and inclusive policies, programs, and institutions.
As part of this program, just a couple of weeks ago, at the inaugural Climate Adaptation Summit, hosted by the Netherlands, we announced a new program to deploy billions of dollars to help young people in Africa build a new digitally-driven model of agriculture that can feed the continent’s people and boost prosperity even as the planet heats up.
The African Development Bank has already committed to putting half its climate finance towards the initiative – $12.5 billion between now and 2025.
The challenge now is to raise an equal amount from donor governments, the private sector and international climate funds. In the COVID-context this is challenging – our latest report “State and Trends in Adaptation” showed that investment in climate adaptation fell in 2020 even as more than 50 million people were affected by a record number of floods, droughts, wildfires and storms.
The pandemic is eroding recent progress in building climate resilience, leaving countries and communities more vulnerable to future shocks. I think awareness is really starting to increase that we can either delay climate action and pay for that choice or plan now and prosper. The returns in investing in building climate adaptation and resilience are much greater than the investment – investing $1.8 trillion globally in the next decade could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits.
We are also working to strengthen ecosystems that support youth-led climate adaptation entrepreneurship, and youth participation in adaptation policies; scale up climate adaptation innovations by strengthening business development services to 10,000 youth-owned enterprises and 10,000 youth with business ideas on jobs and adaptation; develop tailored skills and provide starting tool packs for one million youth to prepare them for climate-resilient jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities in adaptation and unlock $3 billion in credit for adaptation action by innovative youth-owned enterprises through innovative financial instruments.
With all these on the agenda, what role do African leaders have to play in terms of the global adaptation agenda?
With climate-related disasters expected to slow GDP per capita growth, African Governments are likely to experience increasing pressure on budgets and fiscal balances. Climate extremes are already leading to increased government expenditure, a reduction in the volume of collected taxes, ultimately resulting in an increase in government debt and impairment of investments. Adaptation and investment in climate resilience remain high development and investment priorities for Africa if the continent is to attain the SDGs.
In their Nationally Determined Contributions, African countries have already identified key areas where investments in adaptation and resilience building could yield high dividends. These include agriculture and forestry, water resources, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity and ecosystems, and human settlement. Many African countries are also in the process of preparing and finalizing their National Adaptation Plans.
Having said that, climate change is an all of social problem, no one can solve it alone. The role of African leaders is crucial to mobilise governments to boost climate action on both mitigation and adaptation. They need to improve their ability to incorporate climate risks into planning and financing major infrastructure, agriculture and other resilience-related investments.
With the youngest population in the world, Africa needs to find ways to unlock the power of its youth for adaptation – something we are very focused on at the GCA. Having said all of that, there are already a lot of good adaptation initiatives happening on the continent and many other countries in different regions are going to be able to learn from what Africa is doing.
Besides this, what specifically are the expectations from the leaders, looking at the fact that policies and approaches are different in African countries?
Earlier this year, we published a GCA policy brief, with the African Adaptation Initiative which recommended focusing stimulus investment in Africa on resilient infrastructure and food security to overcome the COVID-climate crisis. This was endorsed by 54 Heads of State and Government on the continent so when it comes to the need to accelerate adaptation action, it’s clear African countries are very much aligned. We are working hard on the ground to facilitate knowledge management and capacity building both within countries and between countries as well as promoting partnerships and co-operation at sub-regional and regional levels for increased synergy and scale. This cannot happen without the support of African leaders.
For example in Ghana, we are working to develop its first national-level assessment of the resilience of its infrastructure systems to climate change. By exploring and showcasing the potential co-benefits of nature-based solutions as part of a country-level package of investment in grey and green infrastructure, Ghana will function as a demonstration country of how to reduce costs and enhance ecosystems and we plan to roll out the initiative to other countries across the continent.
What platforms are there for discussing the GCA initiatives and programs for the African elite and the public? Do foreign organizations offer any support for these?
In January 2021, we hosted our first annual Ministerial Dialogue with over 50 ministers and leaders from international organizations including the newly appointed climate envoy John Kerry and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva. The aim of this event is to help scale-up global leadership cooperation to accelerate climate adaptation.
Going forward, it will also serve as an annual high-level forum on climate change adaptation, acting as a lever for global leadership to drive a decade of transformation for a climate-resilient world by 2030. African leaders were very active in the dialogue and we look forward to hearing from them in our future sessions.
There are also other partnerships such as the Climate Commissions of the African Union and the African Climate Policy Center. The African Risk Capacity, a specialized agency of the African Union is making important progress enabling countries to manage climate risks and access rapid financing to respond to climate disasters. The African Union is leading the pan-African Great Green Wall initiative which involves many international organizations and foreign governments.
But climate adaptation will not be successful if it just comes from the top-down. The design of adaptation actions must include and be led by local communities who are best placed to understand needs. Solutions need to be context relevant and accompanied by soft support designed to enhance uptakes such as formal education initiatives, agricultural extension or behavioural change campaigns.
Do you suggest governments have to act now to accelerate issues that you have on the agenda for the next few years? What kind of support do you envisage from African governments?
Over half of Africa’s total population experiences food insecurity. The growing number of extreme climate events, from droughts and new crop diseases to floods and unpredictable growing seasons, continue to threaten Africa’s ability to feed itself.
There are increasing rainfall and malaria risks in East Africa, increasing water stress and decreasing agricultural growing periods North Africa, severe flood risks in coastal settlements in West Africa and increased food insecurity, malaria risks and water stress in Southern Africa. The effect of aggregated climate impacts could decrease the continent’s GDP by 30 per cent by 2050.
Suffice to say Africa really doesn’t a moment to lose and we need to accelerate climate adaptation now. In looking towards recovery from the pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to ensure that we all build forward better. It is our responsibility to ensure that the opportunity isn’t wasted and countries around the world must support Africa in this.
Not too long ago, streaming in Nigeria was seen as a convenience, an alternative to traditional television, used mostly to catch up on missed shows or explore international content. Today, it has evolved into something far more ingrained. Streaming is now a culture: a daily habit that shapes conversations, influences pop culture, drives fandoms and even dictates how stories are told.
From late-night binge sessions and group watch parties to live-tweeting reality shows and football matches, streaming has become woven into how Nigerians experience entertainment. As mobile devices, smart TVs and affordable data options continue to expand access, the platform has moved from the fringes to the centre of everyday life. In 2026, this cultural shift will become even more pronounced.
Here’s what to expect as streaming continues to evolve in Nigeria and across Africa.
Value Will Define Loyalty in an Overcrowded Streaming Market: As streaming becomes mainstream, Nigerian audiences are becoming more discerning. Subscription fatigue is real, and users are no longer impressed by platforms with limited libraries or infrequent updates.
In 2026, loyalty will belong to platforms that offer sustained value, not just headline titles. This means:
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Deep content libraries that go beyond a handful of popular shows
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A healthy mix of live TV, sports and on-demand entertainment
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Regular content refreshes that keep audiences engaged month after month
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Viewers now understand value, and they will gravitate towards platforms that consistently deliver variety and relevance.
Local Stories Will Drive Cultural Relevance: Streaming has amplified the power of Nigerian storytelling, giving local productions the scale and visibility once reserved for traditional TV. Viewers are showing a clear preference for stories that feel familiar, authentic and culturally grounded.
In Nigeria, titles like Omera, Glass House, Italo, The Real Housewives of Lagos, Nigerian Idol and Big Brother Naija have become shared cultural moments, driving online conversations and real-world buzz. These shows are not just being watched; they are being experienced.
Across the continent, similar patterns are emerging, reinforcing the role of hyperlocal content in building loyalty and identity. In 2026, investment in African creators will remain central to streaming growth.
Streaming Becomes Personal and Predictive: As streaming matures, platforms will increasingly rely on AI to understand viewers on a deeper level. In 2026, Nigerian users can expect:
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More intuitive recommendations tailored to individual tastes
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Smarter content discovery that reduces the time spent searching
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Interactive experiences that respond to viewer behaviour
Beyond content, AI will also enhance advertising relevance and customer support, creating a smoother, more personalised user journey.
Live Sports Will Continue to Anchor Streaming Culture: While binge-worthy series drive daily engagement, live sports remain one of streaming’s biggest cultural anchors. Football, in particular, continues to command passionate followership in Nigeria.
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup scheduled for June–July, live streaming will dominate viewing behaviour once domestic leagues conclude. Nigerian football fans demand quality, reliability and immediacy, making official platforms with full broadcast rights, such as SuperSport, essential destinations during major tournaments.
In 2026, sports will further reinforce the value of legitimate, high-quality streaming experiences.
Security Becomes Non-Negotiable: As streaming cements its cultural relevance, content protection will take on greater importance. Premium sports and entertainment remain prime targets for piracy, but the response is becoming more sophisticated.
Technologies from cybersecurity firms like Irdeto now enable real-time monitoring, rapid takedowns and legal action against illicit streaming networks. These measures protect not just platforms, but creators and the broader creative ecosystem, a critical consideration as local production continues to grow.
Innovation Makes Streaming More Inclusive: One of the most significant shifts in Nigeria’s streaming landscape is how inclusive it has become. Platforms are innovating around:
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Flexible pricing
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Bundled services that combine TV and streaming
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Multi-device access, including mobile-first options
Whether premium or entry-level, users can now find options that suit their lifestyle and budget, reinforcing streaming’s position as an everyday entertainment staple.
A More Conscious Streaming Audience Emerges: As streaming culture matures, so does audience awareness. Nigerian viewers are increasingly able to identify illegal streaming platforms and understand the long-term damage piracy causes to the industry.
In 2026, conscious viewing will continue to gain ground, with users learning to avoid red flags such as “free” premium streams, unofficial apps, VPN-only access and excessive pop-up advertising.
Streaming is no longer simply about watching content, it is about belonging to moments, communities and conversations. In Nigeria, it has evolved into a cultural force that shapes how stories are told, shared and celebrated.
As 2026 unfolds, streaming will continue to thrive at the intersection of technology, culture and creativity, offering entertainment that is accessible, relevant and deeply local.
By Anne Mureithi
Provision of banking services in Africa continues to undergo profound digital transformation where most transactions are conducted virtually via digital devices and cash moved electronically. Mobile banking, fintech innovation, and cross-border digital payments have reshaped how individuals and businesses consume financial services.
In Nigeria and across the continent face, banks face sharp scrutiny from expanding regulatory landscape, including Anti-Money Laundering (AML), combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) and combating the financing of proliferation (CPF) that involves disrupting funds for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) through targeted financial sanctions.
With increased cross border trade, everyone including governments look upon banks to provide Know Your Customer (KYC) services, fraud risk management, and increasingly adhere to stringent data protection and privacy regulations as well as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting standards.
Compliance is no longer a back-office obligation, and this calls for increased investments in technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to enable banks to meet compliance requirements.
This is important as local traders want a banking partner who offers one-stop shop services on compliance matters. For banks, this is a competitive advantage, a core capability, and a source of differentiation. By embedding compliance into product and process design, banks can meet regulatory obligations efficiently while fostering innovation through a compliance-by-design approach.
In March 2025, the Central Bank of Kenya published the results of a survey on AI adoption in the banking sector, revealing moderate uptake, with 50% of respondents indicating some level of implementation. The survey found that among institutions that had adopted AI and machine learning, the leading applications were credit risk assessment (65%), cybersecurity (54%) and customer service (43%), followed by e-KYC (41%) and fraud risk management (40%).
These findings underscore significant untapped potential for AI to transform customer experience and strengthen risk management, particularly in AML and compliance monitoring. As intra-Africa trade continues to increase, compliance teams within banks must play a leading role in establishing strong governance, ensuring transparency, and preparing institutions for emerging regulatory expectations.
The Central Bank of Kenya has confirmed that it is in the final stages of developing a Guidance Note on Artificial Intelligence, with 95% of surveyed institutions having requested formal regulatory direction. The anticipated principles-based framework will focus on governance, risk management, transparency, and the ethical use of AI, laying the foundation for responsible innovation in the financial sector.
AI and ML models offer practical solutions to compliance challenges by learning and tracking typical behavioural patterns by customer, product, and corridor, flagging anomalies such as unusual counterparties, transaction values, or routing patterns in cross-border flows. These tools can also generate more accurate and complete assessments of ongoing customer due diligence and customer risk, which can be updated to account for new and emerging threats in real time.
By detecting potential violations of normal customer profiles in data or groups of customers with higher-risk characteristics, AI has streamlined priorities towards high-risk cases and reduced the time spent on false positives. This capability is increasingly critical as transaction volumes and complexity grow. Such technological advances transform compliance from a costly obligation into a strategic advantage.
Customers do not need to know one another to execute a transaction since AI-powered identity authenticates customer identity through document scanning, biometric verification and mobile-based identity solutions. These solutions have also enabled banks to onboard new customers remotely without the need to visit a physical bank to fill in registration details.
Accounts are fully secure and only users who pass the mobile-based identity verification are allowed access thereby preventing fraud. This also supports financial inclusion by enabling access to financial services for individuals who struggle to provide adequate identification documents for opening bank accounts.
In addition, Regulatory Technology (RegTech) solutions enable financial institutions to monitor regulatory developments, map obligations across their operations, conduct initial gap assessments, ensure that policies and procedures are always up to date and streamline regulatory reporting.
This capability is particularly valuable for pan-African institutions in ensuring agility while responding to regulatory changes across multiple jurisdictions. With its presence in 34 African countries, Ecobank advocates for harmonised payment systems and regulatory frameworks as a catalyst for accelerating intra-African trade.
Regional regulatory alignment further amplifies these gains. As African regulators work towards greater harmonisation of standards, banks with pan-African footprints are uniquely positioned to bridge local realities with global expectations, enabling smoother cross-border transactions and reducing friction for businesses operating across multiple markets.
The convergence of digital innovation and regulation presents an opportunity to support regional integration and strengthen public confidence. Banks that integrate compliance into their digital strategies, invest in ethical AI, enforce strong governance, and actively engage regulators will be best positioned to compete, facilitate trade, and protect financial integrity.
On an Africa-wide platform, traders from Nigeria want a synchronised platform that provides them with end-to-end solutions. Say Ecobank Group’s AML monitoring and sanctions screening capabilities within its SWIFT payment infrastructure ensure that all cross-border payment messages undergo real-time compliance checks prior to fund settlement.
With increased intra-Africa trade that rides on online platforms, accelerated digitalisation of cross-border transactions, timely, efficient, and secure payment processing is paramount. Real-time compliance monitoring is a non-negotiable cornerstone of safeguarding the integrity of international payment flows.
Ultimately, the future of banking in Africa will be defined by how institutions harness technology to meet regulatory obligations, deter financial crime, and foster trust among businesses, consumers, and public institutions alike. Compliance is no longer a constraint on growth; it is a foundation for sustainable innovation, regional integration, and long-term confidence in Africa’s financial system.
Ms Mureithi is a director in charge of compliance at Ecobank, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa (CESA)
By Blaise Udunze
Nigeria’s economy will be experiencing yet another round of reform; after the new tax implementation, the banking sector recapitalisation exercise will begin within less than three months until the March 31, 2026, deadline. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, disclosed that 27 banks have tapped the capital market via public offers and rights issues.
The figures show that of 21 the 37 commercial, merchant, and non-interest banks in the country have met or exceeded the revised minimum capital thresholds of N500 billion for internationally authorised banks, N200 billion for national banks, N50 billion for regional banks, and N10-20 billion for non-interest banks. With the developments above, policymakers are betting that stronger balance sheets will help banks withstand macroeconomic shocks, finance growth, and restore confidence in the financial system. On the surface, the logic is sound, capital matters. But history warns us that capital alone is not a cure-all.
Nigeria has been here before, going by the 2004-2005 era of the then-governor of CBN, Charles Soludo, whose banking consolidation dramatically reduced the number of banks from 89 to 25 and created national champions. Yet barely five years later, the system was back in crisis, requiring regulatory intervention, bailouts, and the creation of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) to absorb toxic assets. The lesson here is clear, which revealed that recapitalisation that ignores structural weaknesses merely postpones failure.
If the current exercise is to succeed, the CBN must use it not only to raise capital but to repair the deeper fault lines that have long undermined the stability, credibility, and effectiveness of Nigeria’s banking sector.
More Capital isn’t Always Better Capital
The first and most critical issue is the quality of capital being raised. Disclosures made by the banks have shown that the combined capital base of about N5.142 trillion is already locked in by lenders across the different licence categories. Bigger numbers on paper mean little if the capital is not genuinely loss-absorbing. In past recapitalisation cycles, concerns emerged about funds being raised through related parties, short-term borrowings disguised as equity, or complex arrangements that ultimately recycled the same risks back into the system.
This time, the CBN must insist on transparent, verifiable sources of capital. Every naira raised should be traceable, free from conflicts of interest, and capable of absorbing real losses in a downturn. Otherwise, recapitalisation becomes an accounting exercise rather than a resilience-building one.
Why Corporate Governance Remains the Achilles’ Heel
Perhaps the most persistent weakness in Nigeria’s banking sector is corporate governance failure. Many bank crises have not been caused by macroeconomic shocks alone, but by poor board oversight, insider abuse, weak risk culture, and excessive executive power.
Recapitalisation provides a rare regulatory leverage point. The CBN should use it to reset governance standards, not just capital thresholds. Boards must be independent in substance, not just in form. Being one of the critical aspects of the banking challenge, insider lending rules should be enforced without exception. Risk committees in every financial institution must be empowered, not sidelined by dominant executives.
Without the apex bank fixing governance, new capital risks become fresh fuel for old excesses.
The Unresolved Burden of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs)
Data from the CBN’s latest macroeconomic outlook showed that the banking industry’s Non-Performing Loans ratio climbed to an estimated 7 percent, pushing the sector above the prudential ceiling of 5 percent. Nigeria’s banking sector continues to be drowned with high volumes and recurring non-performing loans (NPLs), and this is often concentrated in sectors such as oil and gas, power, and government-linked projects. Though with the trend of events, one may say that regulatory forbearance has helped maintain surface stability in the sector, no doubt it has also masked underlying vulnerabilities.
The truth is that a credible recapitalisation exercise must confront this reality head-on. Loan classification and provisioning standards should reflect economic truth, not regulatory convenience. Banks should not be allowed to carry impaired assets indefinitely while presenting healthy balance sheets to investors and the public.
Transparency around asset quality is not a threat to stability; it is a foundation for it.
How Foreign Exchange Risk Quietly Amplifies Financial Shocks
Few risks have damaged bank balance sheets in recent years as severely as foreign exchange volatility. Many banks continue to carry significant FX mismatches, borrowing short-term in foreign currency while lending long-term to clients with naira revenues.
During periods of FX adjustment, these mismatches can rapidly erode capital, no matter how well-capitalised a bank appears on paper. Recapitalisation must therefore be accompanied by tighter supervision of FX exposure, stronger disclosure requirements, and realistic stress testing that assumes adverse currency scenarios, not best-case outcomes.
Ignoring FX risk is no longer an option in a structurally import-dependent economy.
Concentration Risk and the Narrow Credit Base
Another long-standing weakness is excessive concentration risk. A disproportionate share of bank lending is often tied to a small number of large corporates or government-related exposures. While this may appear safe in the short term, it creates systemic vulnerability when those sectors face stress.
At the same time, the real economy, particularly SMEs and productive sectors, remains underfinanced because, over the years, Nigeria’s banks faced significant concentration risk, particularly in the oil and gas sector and in foreign currency exposure, while grappling with a narrow credit base characterised by limited lending to the private sector. This is due to high credit risk and tight monetary policy. Owing to this trend, recapitalisation should therefore be in alignment with policies that encourage credit diversification, improved credit underwriting, and smarter risk-sharing mechanisms, and not the other way round.
Therefore, it will be right to say that banks that grow larger but remain narrowly exposed do not strengthen the economy; they amplify its fragilities.
Risk Management in a Volatile Economy
The recurring inflation shocks, interest-rate swings, fiscal pressures, and external shocks are frequent features, not rare events, which show that Nigeria is not a low-volatility environment.
Currently, the Nigerian banking sector’s financial performance and investment returns are equally affected by various risks, including credit, liquidity, market, and operational risks.
Today, many banks still operate risk models that assume stability rather than disruption. Time has proven that risk management is essential for mitigating these risks and ensuring stability and profitability.
The apex bank must ensure that the recapitalisation process mandates robust, Nigeria-specific stress testing, and banks must demonstrate resilience under severe but plausible scenarios. This includes sharp currency depreciation, interest-rate spikes and sovereign stress. It must evolve from a compliance function to a strategic discipline.
Transparency and Financial Reporting
Investors, depositors, and analysts must be able to understand banks’ true financial positions without navigating a lack of transparent disclosures or creative accounting. Hence, public trust in the banking sector depends heavily on credible financial reporting.
The CBN should use recapitalisation to strengthen the International Financial Reporting Standard enforcement, disclosure standards, and audit quality. In championing this course, banks’ financial statements should clearly reflect capital adequacy, asset quality, related-party transactions, and off-balance-sheet exposures. Transparency is to enable confidence, not about exposing weakness.
Regulatory Consistency and Credibility
Policy credibility has been one of the greatest challenges for Nigeria’s financial regulators.
Abrupt changes, unclear timelines, and inconsistent enforcement undermine investor confidence and weaken reform outcomes.
Recapitalisation must be governed by clear rules, predictable timelines, and consistent enforcement. Both domestic and foreign investors need assurance that the rules of the game will not change midstream. Regulatory credibility is itself a form of capital.
Consumer Protection and Banking Ethics
While recapitalisation focuses on banks’ balance sheets, the public experiences banking through fees, service quality, dispute resolution, and ethical conduct. Persistent complaints about hidden charges and poor customer treatment erode trust in the system and a stronger banking sector must also be a fairer and more accountable one. It must be noted that strengthening consumer protection frameworks alongside recapitalisation will help rebuild public confidence and reinforce financial inclusion goals.
Too Big to Fail and How to Resolve Failure
Looking at what is obtainable in the system, larger, better-capitalised banks can also become systemically dangerous if failure resolution frameworks are weak. This requires that recapitalisation should therefore be accompanied by credible plans for resolving distressed banks without destabilising the entire system or resorting to taxpayer-funded bailouts, which has been the norm in the Nigerian banking sector today. The cynic might say that recapitalisation simply made big banks bigger and empowered dominant shareholders. However, a more prospective approach invites all stakeholders, including regulators, customers, civil society and bankers themselves, to co-design the next chapter of Nigerian banking; one that balances scale with inclusion, profitability with impact, and stability with innovation.
Clear resolution mechanisms reduce moral hazard and reinforce market discipline.
A Moment That Must Not Be Wasted
Recapitalisation is not merely a financial exercise; it is a governance and trust reset opportunity. If the CBN focuses solely on capital numbers, Nigeria risks repeating a familiar cycle of apparent stability followed by crisis.
The banking sector can lay a solid foundation that truly supports economic transformation if recapitalization is used to address governance failures, asset quality, FX risk, transparency, and regulatory credibility.
Nigeria does not just need bigger banks. It needs better banks, institutions that are resilient, transparent, well-governed, and trusted by the public they serve. Hence, it must be a system that creates a more robust buffer against shocks and positions Nigerian banking as a global competitor capable of funding a $1 trillion economy, as the case may be.
This recapitalisation moment must be about building durability, not just size. The cost of missing that opportunity would be far greater than the cost of getting it right.
Blaise, a journalist and PR professional, writes from Lagos and can be reached via: [email protected]
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