Hassanein Hiridjee's Axian Group buys five Letshego units in pan-African banking push

Hassanein Hiridjee is buying his way deeper into African banking. The Madagascar-born billionaire and chief executive of Axian Group is acquiring five Letshego subsidiaries across Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda through Axian Digital Venture Holdings and Management, the group's Dubai-based digital banking arm.

The deal lands neatly into Hiridjee's playbook. Since founding Axian with his brother Amin in 2015, he has stretched the family's interests across telecoms, energy, real estate and financial services in 17 countries, with more than 7,500 staff and a 2024 turnover of $2.75 billion. Letshego's portfolio plugs in five regulated banking licenses across markets where Axian has been hunting for scale.

The targets are not small. Letshego Ghana Savings and Loans, Letshego Faidika Bank Tanzania, Letshego Microfinance Bank Nigeria, Letshego Rwanda and Letshego Uganda all sit under binding sale and purchase agreements, with Axian taking 100% of each. The seller, Botswana-listed Letshego Africa Holdings, is using the disposal to retreat to its Southern African heartland.

Erwan Gelebart, who runs ADVHM under Hiridjee, called the agreement "an important step" in expanding the group's financial services footprint into high-growth African markets. Axian already serves more than 24 million consumers and small businesses across Africa through regulated banks and fintechs, and the new licenses fold straight into that platform.

Hiridjee has been steering Axian toward a pan-continental banking ambition for several years. The group rolled out VIA Assurance in Madagascar earlier this year, backed the USDh stablecoin in March and pushed into Nigeria's clean energy market in February. Adding Letshego's franchises gives the digital banking arm scale across both East and West Africa in a single transaction, the kind of leap that organic growth would take a decade to deliver. Each new license multiplies the data, deposits and product reach that the group's tech platform can monetize.

The deal also fits the wider rewiring of African banking. Lenders without the digital infrastructure to compete are choosing to sell rather than spend, and groups like Axian, with deep capital and a tech bench, are picking up assets at attractive multiples. Letshego CEO Reinette van der Merwe is taking the cash and concentrating capital on Southern Africa.

The transaction still needs regulatory approvals from central banks and stock exchanges across the affected countries before it closes. Operations across the five subsidiaries will continue as normal during that process. Once the paperwork clears, Hiridjee will hold the keys to a meaningfully larger banking empire.