This year’s Africa Competitiveness Report comes out amid the most significant financial crisis in generations. In this context, the state of Africa’s financial markets figures among the main topics analyzed in the Report. The analysis finds that some African countries—namely South Africa, Algeria, Nigeria, and Egypt—are well poised to bounce back from the crisis.This is because these large economies enjoy competitive banking systems and have functional regulatory systems, the consequence of financial-sector reforms adopted since the early 1990s.