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Systemic susceptibility highlights the extent to which a banking sector is sensitive to negative shocks. Policymakers and regulators’ objective is to avoid financial crises, and even though they can somewhat control local conditions, internationally transmitted crises are difficult to tackle. This paper analyzes the cross-border systemic risk exposure of South African banks. The marginal expected shortfall is employed with data covering 2002 to 2020. The results show that South African banks are significantly prone to crises emanating beyond the country’s borders. The findings confirm the existence of a significant transfer of risk from other countries to South Africa’s banking sector. Moreover, the amount of foreign capital invested in a bank is found to be a strong predictor of a bank’s international exposure. Knowledge of the linkages that the banking system has with other countries, and how cross-border exposures endanger banks, will form a basis for regulations that ensure a safer financial system.

This study applies the spatial Durbin model to analyse the extent to which international trade and geographical proximity affect the stability of African sovereign‐debt markets. Using sovereign credit default swap spreads, our empirical findings show that it is not only a country's macroeconomic fundamentals that influence its likelihood of default but also contagion from other countries. Trade linkages are found to be a strong transmission channel for contagion risk, especially among countries that trade heavily. A decomposition of the results demonstrates that at least 60% of the variation in credit default swap spread changes is attributed to spillovers through the trading channel. A change in the weighting matrix to geographical proximity confirms the baseline findings that an African country's debt market is susceptible to macroeconomic events in other countries.