Saving the 'indigenous banks

Moral politics of economic sovereignty in Ghana's 2017-19 financial crisis

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2103758
AutoresA R Kauppinen (0000-0001-6486-4746, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, autor de correspondencia), Anna-Riikka Kauppinen
Año2022
Volumen92
Número4
Páginas561-580
Fecha de publicación2022-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s000197202200033x
OpenAlexW4312808650
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas30

Nine Ghanaian private banks collapsed during the country's 2017-19 financial crisis. Apart from public audits that revealed liquidity problems and large portfolios of non-performing loans, the crisis generated vibrant debate on 'indigenous banks' as integral to national economic sovereignty. At the centre of these debates was a contested central bank-led project to inject equity in five struggling Ghanaian banks through a special purpose vehicle (SPV), Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT). Set against the historical dominance of foreign banks in West Africa and Ghana's recent history of political fault lines, this article explores the moral discourses and popular discontents of harnessing an SPV - a device typically used to isolate financial risk - for a desire for African economic sovereignty. Drawing on banking archives, public debates and fieldwork in a private bank selected as a benefactor of the SPV, I focus on the contests of value that emerge when costly banking sector reforms meet a critical public that doubts the sincerity of politicians and bankers as economic 'reformers'. Arguing that 'indigenous banks' became a moral category that embedded abstractions of finance in a nationalist discourse of affect and sentiment, this article illuminates the long history of centring domestic ownership of financial infrastructures in postcolonial African economic policymaking

Economic growth · Economics · Financial crisis · Financial system · Indigenous · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Private sector · Sovereignty · Banking stability, regulation, efficiency · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion