IN SHORT: Madagascar billionaire Hassanein Hiridjee’s Axian Group has signed binding sale and purchase agreements to acquire 100% of five Letshego banking subsidiaries across Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda. The deal is executed through Axian Digital Venture Holdings and Management (ADVHM), the group’s Dubai-based digital banking arm. Letshego Africa Holdings, listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange, is retreating to its Southern African core after posting a BWP235.5 million loss in 2025, heavily shaped by IFRS 5 write-downs on the subsidiaries being sold.
Axian Group, the Madagascar-born conglomerate that has quietly assembled one of Africa’s most diversified multi-sector platforms, is adding five regulated banking licences across West and East Africa in a single transaction, buying Letshego’s Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda subsidiaries as Botswana’s largest indigenous listed company exits the markets it can no longer afford to run.
The binding agreements were confirmed on April 28, with Axian Digital Venture Holdings and Management Limited, headquartered in Dubai, as the acquirer of 100% of each subsidiary’s issued share capital. Regulatory approvals in each of the five jurisdictions are required before completion.
- The five targets are Letshego Ghana Savings and Loans, Letshego Faidika Bank Tanzania, Letshego Microfinance Bank Nigeria, Letshego Rwanda and Letshego Uganda. Each operates as a separately licensed financial institution with its own balance sheet, customer base and regulatory relationship. Axian acquires five operating businesses, five regulatory licences and five country footholds in a single contractual step.
- For Letshego, the disposal is an exit driven by financial reality. The group posted a full-year loss of BWP235.5 million for 2025, against BWP93.3 million in 2024, with the deterioration driven largely by IFRS 5 valuation adjustments applied to the subsidiaries classified as held for sale. Letshego Ghana’s non-performing loan ratio stood at 25.6% at September 2025, well above the Bank of Ghana’s 10% regulatory cap. The group’s strategy is to concentrate on its Southern African core, where Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique and Lesotho operations have performed more consistently.
- Axian’s strategic logic is the reverse. The Malagasy group, co-run by brothers Hassanein and Amin Hiridjee since 2015, posted $2.75 billion in turnover in 2024 across telecoms, energy, real estate and financial services in 17 countries with more than 7,500 staff. It already serves over 24 million consumers and small businesses across Africa through regulated banks and fintechs. Adding five new markets through the Letshego acquisition extends that reach into Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda, precisely the markets where its telecom and fintech footprint creates cross-selling and distribution synergies.
- The deal fits a broader Axian financial services buildout. In March 2026 Axian backed the USDh stablecoin. In February it entered Nigeria’s clean energy market. Earlier in 2026 it rolled out VIA Assurance in Madagascar. ADVHM CEO Erwan Gelebart described the Letshego acquisition as “an important step” in expanding the group’s financial services footprint into high-growth African markets.
- The Nigerian banking licence alone is strategically valuable. Nigeria is Africa’s largest financial services market, and a microfinance banking licence gives Axian a regulated entry point to serve the country’s 40 million-plus unbanked adults at a time when the CBN is actively encouraging the digital financial services ecosystem.
- Ghana adds complexity: Letshego Ghana Savings and Loans is separately listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange and has outstanding bonds on the Ghana Fixed Income Market maturing in 2026, 2027 and 2029. A change of ownership requires Bank of Ghana approval and formal engagement with bondholders. Letshego Ghana CEO Nii Amankra Tetteh confirmed regulatory engagement is underway.
The transaction positions Axian as one of the few pan-African financial services platforms with simultaneous active operations across both West and East Africa, a geographic straddling that few institutions outside the legacy development banks have achieved.
The Bigger Picture: The Letshego sale is a Rorschach test for African financial services strategy. Letshego built a 25-year pan-African microfinance platform and is now selling parts of it because the financial economics became unworkable in the post-COVID, high-NPL environment. Axian is buying precisely because the licences and customer relationships, once restructured, represent a building block for a multi-sector digital financial services empire. The same assets that are a liability to a pure-play microfinance group become an opportunity to a diversified conglomerate with telecoms distribution and energy infrastructure to cross-sell against. Africa’s financial consolidation is not just happening at the top of the market. It is happening in the middle too, and the buyers are increasingly conglomerates with multi-sector leverage rather than banks making lateral moves.
Source: Billionaires.Africa / Axian Group / The Patriot April 28, 2026
