The retreat of British banking giants from Africa has triggered an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions, fueling 31 mega mergers in the financial sector within the COMESA region in the last five years.
Data from the COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission (CCCC) in its 2025 annual report shows that between 2021 and 2025, it assessed 240 mergers in the 21-member bloc. Banking and financial services and energy and petroleum led with 31 deals each — 62 in total.
The Commission attributes the surge to three factors: accelerating digital financial transformation, rising capital requirements by central banks, and the exit of big multinational banks.
Though the report did not name the corporations, independent analysis by The EastAfrican_ confirms that between 2021 and 2025, three UK giants — Atlas Mara Ltd, Standard Chartered Plc, and Barclays Plc — pulled out of several African markets in search of more profitable markets globally.
In 2022, the London-listed lender announced its exit from five markets — Angola, Cameroon, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe — and from Consumer, Private and Business Banking (CPBB) in Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire, citing high costs and complexity.
In July 2023, it signed agreements to sell its shareholding in Angola, Cameroon, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone, and its CPBB business in Tanzania to Nigeria’s Access Bank Plc.
The exit is continuing. In November 2025, StanChart said it was exploring divestment of its Wealth and Retail Banking operations in Botswana, Uganda and Zambia. By January 2026, the Bank of Botswana confirmed a proposal to sell its entire Botswana business, and in June 2026, the Bank of Uganda approved the sale of its Ugandan Wealth and Retail unit to South Africa’s Absa Group.
In 2021, the UK conglomerate that had acquired seven banks in seven countries exited the continent entirely, calling its African investments risky and the macroeconomic environment challenging. Between 2020 and 2021, it divested from Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Botswana and Zambia, blaming currency volatility and drying liquidity.
After more than 100 years in Africa, Barclays Plc in December 2017 cut its stake in Barclays Africa Group from 62.3 percent to a non-controlling 14.9 percent, and in April 2022 sold another 7.4 percent — 63 million shares — for $687 million on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Its African operations rebranded to Absa.
The vacuum has been filled by pan-African banks.
Nigeria’s Access Bank swept across the continent, picking up the assets left by Standard Chartered. Kenya’s KCB Group acquired controlling stakes in Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR) and Congolese lender Trust Merchant Bank (TMB).
Global rating agency Fitch said the exit gives emerging pan-African groups significant space to grow.
“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.
Beyond finance, agriculture recorded 26 mergers — the second-highest — driven by sustainability pressures, global food demand and consolidation by multinationals. ICT and aviation recorded 12 each, transport and logistics 10.
The watchdog also noted that Covid-19 forced many struggling firms to merge to survive.
