The Globalisation of Corporate Governance and Implications for African Corporates in a Changing Regulatory Landscape

Adopting global corporate governance standards remains a challenge for most corporates in developed and developing economies, but shareholder capitalism is probably set on an irreversible growth path. The growing number of African corporate entities abiding by global corporate governance standards, despite the regulatory costs associated with compliance, is a positive development. The short-term costs in trade finance, financial intermediation and banks’ balance sheets are outweighed by the long-term benefits of adopting global corporate governance standards. Improving compliance requires better data and in Africa an initiative led by the African Export-Import Bank aims to provide centralised single sources of the primary data required to conduct customer due diligence checks on African counterparties.