The Ghana banking crisis was a severe banking crisis that affected Ghana between August 2017 and January 2020. The Bank of Ghana (BoG) allowed several indigenous banks to be taken over by private companies between August 2017 and January 2019 after Nana Akufo-Addo was elected president in December 2016. Most of the indigenous banks had been at the risk of defaulting on their loans, as they had been affected by the economic fallout of the Great Recession, which caused the events leading up to the Arab Spring that occurred in North Africa beginning in 2010. The crisis is the most severe economic crisis to affect Ghana since it became an independent country in 1960. The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Ghana towards the end of the banking crisis in 2020, dealing further damage to the country's economy.