South Africa's Absa Group has approved plans to accelerate its pan-African expansion through the acquisition of existing banks and greenfield operations with the goal of increasing customer numbers, boosting profit margins and reducing concentration risk in Pretoria.
The group says it is attempting to deepen its foothold on the continent through a “revised” pan-African strategy and an updated operating model, designed to position the lender for high-return, customer-led growth opportunities across Africa.
In its latest annual report (2025), the group says it will review opportunities across Africa following acquisitions in Mauritius and Uganda. “We are exploring new growth opportunities to address growing customer needs and the rapidly changing operating environment, which may include 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 the domestic wealth and retail banking business of Standard Chartered Bank Uganda, subject to regulatory approval, with integration planned for the fourth quarter of 2026.
In 2025, Absa implemented a change to its retail operating model with the creation of a consolidated PPB entity, incorporating the private banking and private wealth businesses previously housed under BB. The transition in South Africa was largely completed during the year.
The three core businesses – PPB, BB and CIB – will operate on a pan-African basis in the future under a revised strategy and group operating model.
This model is already in place for CIBs, with progress expected to be made on PPBs and BBs in 2026 under the leadership of newly appointed Business Chief Executives.
The group has appointed Zaid Moolah and Sitoyo Lopokoite as chief executives of CIB and PPB respectively, while the process of appointing the chief executive of BB is underway. These leadership changes are expected to improve performance, especially 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 “review organic and inorganic opportunities across Africa, developing alternative revenue streams focusing on Africa-China, intra-Africa and global CIB opportunities to enhance our presence and offerings.” “The Board will monitor the continued embedding of the operating model and the financial performance generated by the approved strategy.” The revision of the operating model introduced organizational changes that began at the beginning of the year with the creation of PPB, followed by the establishment of three Pan-African business units (CIB, PPB and BB) in line with investors' expectations.
The Africa region's role has been refined to focus on executing 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 selectively invest in future growth engines such as digital and data-driven client solutions, wealth and investments and value-added services, with the aim of expanding relevance, diversifying revenues and strengthening future preparedness.
The shift is from market-specific operating models to an integrated pan-African business architecture that takes advantage of shared capabilities, scale and cross-market customer flows while reducing costs.
Under the new plan, Absa will prioritize high-growth markets where it holds a competitive advantage, with investments designed to improve margin quality, reduce earnings volatility and support stable long-term growth. “We have 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 income mix,” the lender says. To fully capture the Pan-African opportunity, we will run the Group on a Pan-African basis. In 2025 PPB integrated our retail capabilities and took the first significant step in our operating model. PPB and BB now operate as pan-African businesses with CIB no longer divided between the South Africa and Africa regions. This will maximize synergy and economies of scale. “Our PPB and BB operations now contribute almost a third of the group’s earnings and are growing faster than our South African operations, further strengthening our pan-African reach and connecting intra-African and intra-African corridors,” says Group CEO Kenny Fihla. “My job is to drive execution, efficiency and disciplined capital by combining our strengths and directing them with greater precision towards the most important opportunities. The focus has to be on Absa on allocation.”
The lender says, “Using our footprint more effectively will fuel our pan-African ambitions by aligning business units under an integrated model. Strategic clarity will be sharpened to focus capital and resources on key markets and segments, avoiding fragmented investments.” Multinational Barclays PLC, whose operations in Africa span more than 100 years, exited the continent entirely in December 2017 by reducing its stake in Barclays Africa Group from 62.3 percent to a non-controlling stake of 14.9 percent. Barclays Africa Group was rebranded as Absa Group following Barclays' exit.
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