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Finance provides a particularly challenging area for policy design and research, especially if placed in the context of those countries’ needs for development. The policy challenges and research needs are very large, due in part to a major rethinking of the role, scale, and structure of a desirable financial sector, as well as its regulation, in light of the North Atlantic financial crisis that started in 2007/2008. This major crisis also challenged the view that developed countries’ financial and regulatory systems should be emulated by developing countries, given that developed countries’ financial systems have been so problematic and so poorly regulated. Furthermore, it is important to understand the implications of the major international policy and analytical rethinking for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and adjust it to the features and needs of their economies. The financial sectors of African low-income countries (LICs) are still …