SNG: British banks’ exit from Africa fuels 31 mergers in Comesa bloc

By Zawya16 hours ago Updated

By Staff Writer

The retreat of British banking giants from Africa triggered an unprecedented corporate mergers and acquisitions across the continent, credited with 31 mega mergers in the financial sector within the Comesa region over the past five years.‎‎Disclosures by the Comesa competition watchdog show that mergers in the banking ‎and financial services sector between 2021 and 2025 were driven by the rising digital transformation ‎in the 21-member bloc, increasing digital financial products, exiting of big multinational banks in ‎some countries and general increase in capitalisation requirements by the central banks ‎in majority of the member states.

The Comesa Competition and Consumer Commission (CCCC), in its annual report for 2025, fell short of naming the corporates involved in the deals, but independent analysis by The EastAfrican shows that between 2021 and 2025, the UK financial conglomerate Atlas Mara, Standard Chartered Plc and Barclays Plc exited several African markets for more profitable markets globally.‎‎This gave way to Nigeria's Access Bank to sweep across the continent, picking up the pieces left by exiting players to build a pan-African network.‎‎Kenyan banking giant KCB Group acquired a controlling stake in Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR) and Congolese lender Trust Merchant Bank (TMB) in that period.

According to the CCC report, 240 mergers were assessed within the Comesa region during the five-year period, of which the highest number – 62 – were in the banking and financial services sector and the energy and petroleum sector, with each sector registering 31 deals.

The agriculture sector had the second-largest number of mergers, 26, followed by ICT and aviation with 12, and ‎transport and logistics with 10, while the least number of mergers were in hospitality, mining and ‎construction.‎‎‎StanChart Plc, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), announced in 2022 its exit from five African markets—Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe—and the Consumer, Private and Business Banking (CPBB) segments in Tanzania and Cote d’Ivoire, citing the complexity and high cost-to-income ratio of operating in these markets.

Following the announcement, Standard Chartered and Access Bank Plc entered into agreements in July 2023 for the sale of StanChart’s shareholding in its subsidiaries in Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, and its CPBB business in Tanzania.

In November 2025, the lender announced it was exploring a potential divestment of its Wealth and Retail Banking operations in Botswana, Uganda and Zambia.

In January 2026, the Bank of Botswana announced that Stanchart Plc had proposed the sale of all of its business in Botswana and in June 2026, the Bank of Uganda approved StanChart’s sale of its Wealth and Retail Banking segment in Uganda to South Africa’s Absa Group.

In 2021, UK financial conglomerate Atlas Mara Ltd, which had acquired seven banks in seven African countries, exited the continent, terming its African investments risky and the sub-Saharan macroeconomic environment challenging.

Between 2020 and 2021, Atlas Mara divested from five markets – Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zambia.

The bank’s holding company, which is listed on the LSE, said currency volatility and the drying up of liquidity in African markets adversely impacted its operations prompting the board to reconsider divestiture and new funding options to shore up the group’ balance sheet.

Barclays Plc, whose operations on the continent spanned more than 100 years, marked its exit from the region in December 2017 by reducing its shareholding in South Africa’s Barclays Africa Group, the holding company of its African subsidiaries, from 62.3 percent to a non-controlling stake of 14.9 percent.

In April 2022, Barclays reduced its African footprint farther by selling 7.4 percent of its stake – 63 million shares – for $687 million on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

Following the exit of Barclays Plc, Barclays Africa Group rebranded all African operations to Absa.

Global rating agency Fitch said the exit of the foreign banks from the continent gives emerging pan-African banking groups significant space to grow, either organically or through mergers and acquisitions.“We see significant opportunities for local and regional banks in Africa despite the challenges. Some banking groups with pan-African ambitions should eventually gain enough scale to compete with long-established institutions,” Fitch said in April 2024.

According to the Comesa competition watchdog, the high number of mergers in the agriculture sector ‎is partly driven by the rising environmental concerns, shifting consumer preferences, regulatory pressures calling for more sustainable agriculture practices, capital investment, entry into new markets and global consolidation by multinational undertakings.“This ‎is coupled with the rise in the demand for food globally. Other sectors have also been ‎affected by the changing market dynamics and challenges experienced in those sectors,” the report says.“Further, looking at the period under review, it is also important to note that Covid-19 ‎also had an impact on mergers as it led to a rise in the number of mergers in some ‎sectors because presumably most companies were struggling during that period and ‎mergers appear to have been one of the vehicles to ensure continued operations of ‎these companies.”