Established in 1999, it is headquartered in Tripoli, Libya, and owned by the governments of its 14 participating, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Sudan together with Libya.

[2] The BSIC was formed in 1999 at the initiative of Muammar Gaddafi, a year after the Community of Sahel–Saharan States, as an instrument of his leadership ambitions in that region.

[2] By 2013, BSIC Group was looking for an external financial partner to shore up its balance sheet,[2] but eventually remained owned by the participating governments.

[1] Following successive recapitalizations in response to poor financial performance, however, the balance between these evolved over time and BSIC came under increasingly direct Libyan equity control, so that the government of Libya owned 56 percent of its equity by the late 2010s, followed by Sudan with 10 percent.

[3] In 2019, to meet increased capital requirements, BSIC merged its Ghanaian subsidiary with local peer OmniBank Ghana Ltd to form OmniBSIC Bank.