Whichever way you lean on the economic theory spectrum, what matters the most to taxpayers across the continent is that they get an adequate return on their investment (taxes) – East Africa’s economic growth provides a suitable ROI environment, and banks have an important role to play in enabling residents in the region to reap the rewards of this strong momentum.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has recently released its East Africa Economic Outlook report which paints a bullish medium-term picture of the region’s prospects.
The publication notes that the region’s medium term economic growth is expected to outpace that of Africa and all other regions of the continent. It adds that economic growth in East Africa will accelerate to 5.1 percent in 2023 and 5.8 percent in 2024, largely driven by growth in Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Tanzania in that order.
The most obvious question from a glance at the Development Bank’s forecast is the likelihood of this growth materializing. But what is equally important to consider is how this potential growth will filter down to the man on the street, the entrepreneur, farmer, civil servant, pensioner, and their dependents.
As a global business [whose founders] set out to transform the African financial services sector by changing the narrative of the continent and creating a globally connected community and ecosystem bank, Access Bank is committed to collaborating with stakeholders across the region to reverse the ‘paradox of plenty’. East Africa is a region richly endowed with minerals such as fluorspar, titanium and zirconium, gold, oil, gas, cobalt and nickel, diamonds, copper, coal and iron ore.
Our aim is therefore to create a carriageway which enables the region to extract maximum value from its resources. We seek to achieve this by providing the requisite access to trade finance, treasury, international payments, and loans via the wider distribution network of Access Bank’s presence in the key trade corridors.
We recognize that East Africa’s success story (in trade, mining and beyond) will continue to be underpinned by entrepreneurship and we have, to this end, developed a strong banking proposition that is aimed at encouraging and supporting SMEs’ strong growth ambitions across the region.
With over 36 branches across the region, customers continue to benefit from a wide network which provides best in class, seamless and consistent service experience that is aligned to the customer promise of speed, service, security and sustainability.
Our recent foray into Tanzania, which has seen us acquire a majority equity stake in African Banking Corporation (Tanzania) Limited (“BancABC Tanzania”), as well as Standard Chartered Bank’s Consumer Private and Business Banking (CPBB) unit, reinforces our commitment to the region’s growth and prosperity.
As soon as this is concluded, Access Bank’s presence in the region will span Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and DRC, servicing in excess of 315,000 customers. If one considers that as recently as 2017, the World Bank reported that 7 percent of Burundi’s population had a bank account, then it becomes immediately apparent that a lot of work needs to be done to accelerate financial inclusion.
By expanding our retail presence across the region and evolving into a digital sales and service platform by 2027, we seek to enable enhanced financial inclusion across our East African operations.
Being one of Africa’s leading banks and its largest by customers, we recognize the enormous responsibility bestowed on us to help accelerate East Africa’s economic growth.
Anchored by a robust capital base, unapparelled customer service and governance structures, we will play our part and continue to leverage our scale to ensure that our global franchise serves as a gateway for payments, investment, and trade within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world.
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