African banks are sinking deeper into trouble. Drowning in bad debt and swamped by slowing economies, more and more of the continent’s lenders are starting to fail. The collapse of a Ugandan bank, said to be an acquisition target of Bob Diamond’s Atlas Mara, is adding to woes stalking the industry from Mozambique to Nigeria. High interest rates, soaring levels of unpaid loans and low commodity prices are just some of the factors felling banks as growth across the world’s poorest continent stutters. Ugandan regulators on Thursday suspended the board of Crane Bank and took over operations because the lender was under-capitalised, days after trying to ward off a run on deposits. Nigerian regulators in July replaced the management of the country’s eighth-largest bank. Kenya and Zambia both seized some of their smaller banks, in September Mozambique had to stabilise one of its lenders, while the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had to step in for one of its biggest banks. "We’ve been f...
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