South Africa’s Absa Group has approved a plan to accelerate its pan-African expansion through acquisitions of existing banks and greenfield operations, aiming to grow customer numbers, boost profit margins and reduce concentration risk in Pretoria.

 

The group says it seeks to expand its foothold on the continent through a “revised” pan-African strategy and an updated operating model designed to position the lender for higher-return, customer-led growth opportunities across Africa.

In its latest annual report (2025), the group says it will review opportunities across Africa following its acquisitions in Mauritius and Uganda.“We are exploring new growth opportunities to address evolving customer needs and a rapidly changing operating environment, which may involve partnerships or acquisitions. Our recent acquisitions in Mauritius and Uganda are important steps in this direction,” the group says.“The Uganda acquisition, relating to Standard Chartered’s Wealth and Retail Banking portfolio, will broaden our retail and wealth offering in that market. We are also expanding value-added services and launching a mobile virtual network operator.”Absa Uganda has entered into an agreement to acquire Standard Chartered Bank Uganda’s domestic Wealth and Retail Banking business, subject to regulatory approvals, which are on track, with integration planned for the fourth quarter of 2026.

In 2025, Absa implemented changes to its retail operating model with the creation of a consolidated PPB unit, incorporating private banking and private wealth businesses previously housed under BB. The transition was substantially completed in South Africa during the year.

The three core businesses—PPB, BB and CIB—will operate on a pan-African basis under the revised strategy and group operating model going forward.

This model is already in place for CIB, with progress on PPB and BB expected in 2026 under the leadership of newly appointed business chief executives.

The group has appointed Zaid Moola and Sitoyo Lopokoiyit as chief executives of CIB and PPB respectively, while the process of appointing the BB chief executive is under way. These leadership changes are expected to improve performance, particularly in retail franchises. Charles Russon has also been appointed group executive in charge of the Africa region.

Absa says its focus in 2026 is to “drive organic and review inorganic opportunities across Africa, developing alternative revenue streams while focusing on Africa–China, intra-Africa and global CIB opportunities to scale our presence and offerings.”“These shifts will further enable banking revenue growth and increase market share where appropriate, while delivering enhanced returns,” the lender says. “The Board will oversee continued embedding of the operating model and the financial performance generated by the approved strategy.”The revision of the operating model introduced organisational changes that began earlier in the year with the creation of PPB, followed by the establishment of the three pan-African business units (CIB, PPB and BB), aligned with investor expectations.

The Africa Regions role has been refined to focus on executing the Africa Regions strategy, extracting value from existing markets and capturing return-on-equity-enhancing expansion opportunities across the continent.

Under the revised pan-African strategy, the group seeks to invest selectively in future growth engines such as digital and data-driven customer solutions, wealth and investments, and value-added services, aimed at expanding relevance, diversifying revenue and strengthening future readiness.

The shift is from market-specific operating models to an integrated pan-African business architecture that leverages shared capabilities, scale and cross-market client flows while reducing costs.

Under the new plan, Absa will prioritise high-growth markets where it holds competitive advantage, with investments designed to improve margin quality, reduce earnings volatility and support stable long-term growth.“We identified substantial opportunities across the continent that we are well positioned to capture, while continuing to broaden our footprint to reduce concentration risk and achieve a more balanced earnings mix,” the lender says.“To fully capture the pan-African opportunity, we will run the group on a pan-African basis. The creation of PPB in 2025 unified our retail capabilities and marked the first key step in our operating model. PPB and BB now operate alongside CIB as pan-African businesses, no longer divided between South Africa and Africa Regions. This will maximise synergies and economies of scale.”“Our PPB and BB operations serve just over 13 million customers. Our Africa Regions business now contributes about a third of group earnings and is growing faster than our South African operations, further strengthening our pan-African reach and connecting intra-African and inter-African corridors,” says Group CEO Kenny Fihla.“My task is to focus Absa on execution, efficiency and disciplined capital allocation by connecting our strengths and directing them with greater precision toward the opportunities that matter most.”

“Leveraging our footprint more effectively will drive our pan-African ambitions by aligning business units under a unified model. Strategic clarity will be sharpened to focus capital and resources on key markets and segments, avoiding fragmented investments,” the lender says.“We will deepen our presence in high-potential markets, improve returns in challenged markets through scale, discipline and efficiency, enhance corridor capabilities to connect African clients to regional and global opportunities, and move toward more unified architectures, processes and customer experiences.”British banking multinational Barclays Plc, whose operations in Africa spanned more than 100 years, fully exited the continent in December 2017 by reducing its shareholding in Barclays Africa Group from 62.3 per cent to a non-controlling stake of 14.9 per cent. Barclays Africa Group was subsequently rebranded as Absa Group following Barclays’ exit.

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