ACCESS BANK MADAGASCAR
COUNTRY: Madagascar - Divested
At the time of investment, Access Bank was a greenfield MFI, managed under contract by LFS. Access Bank focuses in providing credit to MSEs located in and around Madagascar’s three principal urban centers, Antananarivo, Toamasina, and Antisirabe. AfriCap has invested in AccessBank in partnership with KFW, the IFC, Societe Generale and Triodos.
CAP MICROFINANCE
COUNTRY: Senegal
CAP Microfinance is a Greenfield MFI that is being established in Senegal in partnership with Senegal’s second largest bank, CBAO. CAP will target the high end of the microfinance market, seeking to service clients that are too large for traditional Senegalese MFIs and too small for commercial banks.
EQUITY BANK LIMITED COMPANY (EBL)
COUNTRY: Kenya
This was AfriCap’s very first investment. EBL is a rapidly growing MFI based in Kenya, and with the goal of expanding to become a Pan-African institution. EBL began an initiative to open and operate its own network of ATMs for clients. EBL was listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange in August 2006.
PRIDE TANZANIA
COUNTRY: Tanzania – Divested
PRIDE Tanzania is a microfinance institution involved in the provision of credit to small and micro entrepreneurs in Tanzania since 1994. It is the largest MFI in Tanzania, with 32 branches. While established as an NGO, PRIDE Tanzania began a transformation into a regulated commercial institution in 2005, and provides to its clientele, a series of gradually increasing group-based loans, consumer loans for salaried employees, wholesale lending to rural banks.
PRIDE UGANDA
COUNTRY: Uganda – Divested
PRIDE Uganda is a microfinance institution, formed in 1995, involved in the provision of credit to small and micro-entrepreneurs in Uganda. While founded in 1995 as an NGO, it became a commercial entity in 1999.
SOCREMO
COUNTRY: Mozambique
SOCREMO is one of the three dominant Microfinance Institutions in Mozambique. Born in the early 1990’s as a GTZ-funded project, it was subsequently converted into a company jointly owned by local and international private organizations and the Government of Mozambique. Today, the company is operated under management contract by LFS, an international technical assistance provider specialized in Microfinance and financial services for SMEs. Its product offering includes, SME loans, savings accounts, foreign exchange, money transfers and time deposit account.
UNION TRUST BANK
COUNTRY: Sierra Leone
UTB is one of the six commercial banks operating in Sierra Leone. Founded in 1995, via the acquisition of Meridien-BIAO International Bank by local entrepreneurs, it is to date one of the only locally owned and operated financial institutions in Sierra Leone. UTB survived Sierra Leone’s civil war, and has a track record of serving the community and maintaining profitability during most difficult periods. While UTB began life as a commercial bank, and continues to serve the commercial sector, its long-term strategy is to transition into a full-service MFI. UTB offers traditional banking services targeted for small to medium enterprises and employees in urban areas.
WOMEN’S WORLD BANKING GHANA
COUNTRY: Ghana
Part of the Women’s World Banking MFI umbrella organization, Women’s World Banking Ghana (WWBG) is a long-standing MFI, founded in 1983 as a donor-funded organization. It converted to a commercial MFI in 1996, and into a public limited company in 2005. Recently WWBG has faced financial setbacks, and AfriCap acquired its stake with the strategy of implementing a corporate turn-around. WWBG has refurbished its branches, designed a new line of loan products, and is ready to grow its loan portfolio.
OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL BANK
COUNTRY: Malawi
OIBM is an MFI geared towards servicing Malawi’s rural population, with a focus on low-income groups and un-banked agricultural workers. OIBM is able to maintain this focus while moving towards profitability because of a superb IT platform, including a biometric technology, which allows it to offer ATM services and payment services to illiterate customers. While OIBM’s focus has garnered it an extremely positive image in Malawi, management is currently pursuing a savings mobilization strategy in order to increase the market penetration of its current branches.
FERLO
COUNTRY: Senegal
Ferlo was created in Senegal in February 2004 as a joint project between ByteTech and AfriCap. The objective was to create a shared electronics payment platform for the microfinance industry and test its potential as the basis for a sustainable model to provide payment services. Ferlo has now evolved from a limited liability company into a share company. MFIs use Ferlo’s platform in their branches and outlets to offer clients card-based services. Ferlo’s platforms also support transactions between consumers and a range of transacting parties: financial institutions, employers, merchants, individuals and the government.
SOFIPE
COUNTRY: Burkina Fasso
SOFIPE is being set up as “the Banque Agricole et Commerciale du Burkina’s (BACB)” microfinance subsidiary. The BACB has been involved in microfinance since 1993 via its Linkages program. SOFIPE is meant to spin off the BACB’s microfinance lending activities. Its objective will be to leverage its relationship with BACB to provide first-rate financial services to Burkina Faso’s informal sector, particularly micro-enterprises and SMEs that are too small to be served by the banking sector, but too large to be well-served by the microfinance sector. SOFIPE will begin by offering a group loan product and will expand his product offering to a micro-entrepreneur and a Very Small Enterprise loan.
SUSU MICROFINANCE BANK
COUNTRY: Nigeria
Susu Microfinance Bank (SMB) was established in June 2006 as a privately owned microfinance bank. Its objective is to provide microfinance services in Lagos under the new microfinance policy prepared by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
SMB is planning to offer three loan products Individual small business working capital loans, Solidarity group working capital loans, fixed asset loans, savings products that include current accounts, savings accounts, fixed term deposits and compulsory loans.
WIZZIT
COUNTRY: South Africa
Wizzit is a South African company that offers a simple to open, transactional bank account that can access through both a debit card and a mobile phone. The concept was conceived in 2002 and after significant research the business model and technologies were purposefully developed to meet the needs of the un-banked population.
Wizzit offers the following savings and transaction products A savings account which can be accessed via debit card or mobile phone, Mobile phone functionality that includes person to person payments, prepaid mobile airtime purchases, and bill payments, Access to Point of Sale and ATM services.
FIRST ALLIED AND SAVINGS AND LOANS (FASL)
COUNTRY: Ghana, Divested
FASL is Ghana’s leading savings and loans institution based in Kumasi. Founded in 1995, it developed a solid business as a savings institution during the first ten years of operations. By the time of AfriCap’s investment in 2004, it had become capital constrained, both in terms of new product development and meeting the Central Bank of Ghana’s minimum capital adequacy requirements.
LA REGIONALE
COUNTRY: Cameroon
La Regionale was founded in 1997 by its CEO Mr. Ombang Ekatt, a former bank executive with over 25 years of experience in Finance. It has since become a leading profitable MFI in the CEMAC (Central Africa Economic and Monetary Community) sub-region. Currently, the company has 24 branches in Cameroon, and is in the process of obtaining a microfinance license in Gabon.
La Regionale offers Loans and Saving accounts to three market segments (Upper segment: SMEs, NGOs etc, Mid segment: employees of public and private sectors, and Lower segment: students, GICs, in Urban and Rural areas), insurance product and transfer services.
KINGDOM FINANCE
COUNTRY: Botswana
Kingdom Finance is a wholly owned subsidiary of KBAL (a registered offshore investment bank in Botswana). Kingdom Finance targets the SME market and has the vision of becoming the leading SME finance institution by market share in Botswana as a pre-cursor to being the first SME bank.
Kingdom Finance has been in operation since late 2006.
Kingdom Finance services include: Invoice Factoring – provide short term financing and working capital based on the borrower’s accounts receivable, Purchase Order Financing -provide short term financing to companies that provide goods and services to institutions such as the government and largest blue chip companies.
TUTIJENGE TANZANIA LIMITED
COUNTRY: Tanzania
Six former FINCA Tanzania employees founded Tujijenge Tanzania Limited in 2006. Their strategy was to form a holding company that incorporates a local institution with a Tanzanian focus. Tujijenge Tanzania hopes to expand into other countries by creating local institutions under the holding company.
Tujijenge Tanzania offers both loan and savings products including Group Loans, Individual Loans, SME loans, Money Transfers and Payments.
ASSUSU
COUNTRY: Niger
Asusu S.A is a leading MFI in Niger that emerged from the transformation of an MFI NGO, ASUSU CIIGABA in 2005. Asusu has access to commercial funding through partnerships with local commercial banks.
Asus serves the low-income population giving micro-entrepreneurs access to financial services, including savings and working capital loans and its main products offerings are savings and credit, specialty credit for cattle breeding and farm equipment.
AFRIQUE EMERGENCE & INVESTISSEMENT (AE&I)
COUNTRY: Ivory Coast
AE&I is a small MFI founded in October 2003 in Abidjan. The bank has developed sound business relationships with local commercial banks such as Omni Finance Bank and international institutions such as ECO Bank. AE&I offer a range of credit products, such as Small Size Credit and Small Credit for Individual loans, MicroCredits, which specifically target women and Savings Guarantee Fund. (e.g. COOPEC, CMEC).
QUALITY FINANCE INTERNATIONAL (QFI)
COUNTRY: Eqypt
QFI is a Microfinance consulting firm, formed by a partnership between Environmental Quality International, an Egyptian consulting firm, and AfriCap. While still in the start-up phase, its goal is to expand aggressively over the next three years in order to offer microfinance consulting services across Africa.
