The impact of African agriculture production on bank stability through bank risk and profit

Abstract

The African farming sector suffers from insufficient finance. Climate changes and socio-political issues hold down the required production level while food on the continent is still inadequate, with more vulnerable people on the one side. On the other side, credit institutions need reasons and guarantees to raise their risk-taking level (financial benefits). Then, this study tries to conciliate those two sides with new shreds of evidence by demonstrating the short and long-run effects of agricultural production on bank sustainability in 40 Sub-Saharan African countries. The study used different agro-production factors (Food and Cereal production factors), bank stability proxies (Liquidity Ratio, NPLs, LLRs), and bank profitability proxies (ROA and ROE). The GMM, DFE, and FMOLS models were used for short (with the 2010-2019 dataset) and long-run analysis (with the 1970-2018 dataset). The results demonstrated that agricultural production increases bank stability and profitability but reduces bank risks. The study concludes that farming finance increases agro-production and stabilizes banks (win-win). Governments, via central banks, should encourage commercial banks to increase bank risk-taking levels to sustain their banking system, increase farming production, and improve food security.