Africa’s Credit Gap: Closing It With Homegrown Solutions

This is the first article of the 5-part Credit Risk Management in SME and Corporate Lending series. We begin by showing why effective credit risk management starts with precise measurement, rather than intuition or anecdotal judgment.

Most SME lending challenges are driven less by borrower risk and more by banks’ limited ability to assess, structure, and manage SME credit in a scalable, practical way. Closing institutional capability gaps, rather than tightening credit, is the key to achieving sustainable SME portfolio growth and resilience.