Information Systems Resilience: An African Banking Case Study

The banking sector is a prime example of digital transformation initiatives, but instability and system outages have plagued banks in South Africa. A systems resilience view of information systems (IS) in the banking sector will illuminate and contextualize how IS can respond and recover. This research investigates a bank's response to system instability and resilience development. We selected one of the multinational banks in Africa as our case study (Bank A), which can be regarded as representative of large multinational banks on the African continent. Bank A identified nine areas of improvement as part of its Systems Resilience Programme. Bank A's response fits Weber et al.'s (2021) understanding of system resilience well, as it is a mix between a socio-technical response and a time perspective. Very little formal research has been done on system resilience in banking in Africa. This paper is a first step in remedying instability facing IS and offers a new perspective regarding resilience in the IS and developing nation context.