Five years ago a snapshot of North Africa’s banking industry would have revealed feeble attempts at changing public perception. Constituents of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia remained hindered from realizing their financial goals through an archaic mental block to keep their savings — what little was available — within the confines of their jalabas. Family firms served as a popular choice for a financial intermediary if an entrepreneur had the right connections and net worth. For the less fortunate individuals on the economic ladder, credit lines were few and far between, discouraged by extensive decentralization, lack of necessary infrastructure, and low net worth per head, making the majority of credit scores unsubstantial to justify extensive credit, especially to fuel business development. Intransigent in their myopia, governments eventually reckoned that national development goals could only be realized through a paradigm shift on the subject of financial intermediaries, the most prominent of
