Commercial bank offices and the mobilisation of private savings in selected sub-Saharan African countries

The mobilisation of domestic savings has remained a thriving issue in discussions of ways and means of harnessing resources for development in Africa. This work attempts to examine the role of a deliberate policy of extending offices of banks to the rural areas in savings mobilisation efforts. Using ordinary least squares methods, data from five African countries that have pursued this policy in recent times are examined, to see if there is any significant relationship between the savings rate and their population per bank office ratio. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the extension of branch offices of banks to rural areas could help attenuate the poor savings performance in most African economies.