The African business of cross-border payments system SWIFT has outperformed the total growth of its global business.

SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides communications systems, products and services to connect more than 10,000 financial institutions and corporations in 212 countries and territories.

And growth for SWIFT has been healthy in Africa.

“In the year to date, African volumes grew by more than 16% versus 10% growth for SWIFT worldwide, highlighting the vitality of the region,” said the company in a press statement.

“The continent’s growth was particularly marked in the payments markets, where volumes rose by almost 21% versus just 8% worldwide,” the company added.

This is according to figures released at SWIFT’s 21st African Regional Conference in Marrakech, Morocco.

Speaking at the conference, Hugo Smit, head of Africa South for SWIFT, said, "Africa is an increasingly important market for SWIFT. Again this year it has outperformed most of our other regions and has proven itself a vital component of our business globally.”

“SWIFT data has been independently validated to be closely correlated to economic activity through the development of the SWIFT Index,” Smit added.

The SWIFT Index helps anticipate gross domestic product (GDP) growth and is empirically tested in collaboration with the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE), notes the press statement.

“Payments have been the locomotive of this long-term growth, with a 75% rise over four years (versus 37% globally) but securities also significantly outperformed, with a rise of 52% across Africa versus 41% globally in the same time period,” reads the statement.

The statement; though, goes on to note that “North African growth has not been as strong as the rest of the continent, struggling to recover to the same levels following the Arab Spring.”

“For example, SWIFT traffic growth for Morocco for the full year 2013 was just 2.7% compared to 39.5% in 2011. However, volumes are beginning to recover – with 5.8% in the year to date – and the long term trends is very positive, with 49% growth in four years,” adds the organisation.