South Africa’s Absa bank has become the latest multinational corporation to have expressed interest in exploiting the Ethiopian market, following last year’s decision by reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to liberalise the economy.
Ethiopia has long prevented foreign ownership in economic sectors including banking, but Abiy has embarked on rapid political, diplomatic and economic changrs since coming to power in April.
Jason Quinn, the bank’s chief financial officer, told reporters that Absa was investigating how and where to enter a number of other growth markets, including Nigeria and Angola.
An entrance into the Ethiopian market of about 100 million people, which is not imminent, would be part of a strategy Absa laid out after its successfully split from Britain’s Barclays in the year 2017.
Absa have been looking to acquire already exisiting budinesses as it would be tasking to build a retail banking business from scratch.
The bank had already highlighted Nigeria as key to future growth, where Quinn said there was a “nice opportunity” for Absa in corporate and investment banking. It had also already flagged Angola as attractive, alongside Egypt.