Africa's banking sector, valued at roughly $107 billion in 2025, remains heavily concentrated in five markets, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa, which together generated about 70 percent of continental banking revenue in 2024, according to a report by Forbes Africa. South Africa alone accounted for more than a quarter of that regional revenue, at $26.4 billion, underscoring just how lopsided the sector's geography remains despite growth pockets opening elsewhere.
African banks are also outperforming their global peers by a wide margin, delivering a 19 percent return on equity in 2024, with an estimated 17 percent for 2025, against a global average closer to 10 percent. Sector revenue climbed from $81 billion in 2020 to $99 billion in 2024, a compound annual growth rate of 5.2 percent, accelerating to roughly 7 percent growth in 2025. A fast-growing, increasingly young population is feeding that expansion: Africa's population grew more than 2 percent annually between 2020 and 2025, with the working-age population rising nearly 3 percent a year.
Industry figures argue the next wave of growth has to come from smaller markets rather than further gains in the five dominant ones. LOTUS Bank Chief Digital Officer Akin Adegoke said banks in smaller African markets can unlock growth by building digital-first models that extend services beyond physical branches, while Clea CEO Sheriff Adedokun argued the next wave of growth will not come from replicating large-market playbooks, but from solving the structural gaps that have kept smaller markets underbanked. Currency depreciation, exchange-rate volatility and inflation forecast at 4 to 6 percent through 2030 remain the clearest risks to that expansion continuing on pace.