Post-Barclays, Absa continues to expand its regional footprint, adding new services each year and doing the nuts and bolts of banking well. Given the central role that trade and the flow of cash play in the region, there are few more important awards than that for Africa’s best bank for transaction services – and Absa is a worthy winner.

Absa’s greater determination to put its money where its mouth is in Africa, after its separation from Barclays, is well known. Even in South Africa, where many of its peers have struggled during the Covid crisis, it continued to grow its corporate loan book under corporate and investment banking chief executive Charles Russon in 2020. But Absa’s preeminence as an African financing house goes well beyond its ability to deploy its balance sheet – and way beyond South Africa.

African banks have enviable growth prospects, but fintech and regulation are forcing them to look beyond their core businesses.

The surprise exit of Absa chief executive Daniel Mminele in April, only 15 months into the job, shows how much the South African group is still finding its way in the post-Barclays era. Mminele – Absa’s first black CEO – was seen in some quarters as losing a power struggle against an overwhelmingly white executive team. Can the next chief executive gain the authority to drive Absa’s revival?

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented change to the way that business is carried out in Africa. For those banks central to supply-chain management and trade finance, the need to maintain the flow of food, essential goods and personal protection equipment despite border closures is critical.

The bank will open a new office in New York to capture the US market in Africa.

Across the continent, the banking sector feared the consequences of the withdrawal of Barclays.

The continent is trying to force financial inclusion at a time when international banks are leaving. It is a hotbed of innovation but still lacks essential infrastructure. So how should we look at banking in a modern Africa?

Partnership could replace broken Barclays links; follows rumours of sale of Société Générale South Africa custody unit to Absa.

London office slated for Q3, New York for 2019; CIB crucial to target of doubling revenue share.

Barclays’ ownership has hobbled some of its biggest businesses in Africa. Now Maria Ramos, chief executive of the Johannesburg-listed successor company that makes up the bulk of Barclays Africa, tells Euromoney Africa about the challenges she faces in extricating Absa and the rest of the network from the London-based group.

Last year’s winner of the newly minted award for financing in Africa was Citi, and Citi again did well in the last 12 months. But Absa wins the award this time round, thanks in large part to its impressive work in South Africa.

CEO to press on with pan-African investment; PLC exit comes as African business turns round.

Absa acquires Barclays Africa; Barclays’ Absa stake rises to 62.3%.

Cross-border partnerships are tricky at the best of times. Each side tends to be wary of the other. Often cultural differences come to the fore. And then there’s the internal politics. So the failure of Barclays and Absa, the South African bank in which Barclays holds a 60% stake, to reach agreement on the sale of the UK bank’s other African businesses will only reinforce the impression that the relationship is tense.