Nigeria’s pan-African bank United Bank for Africa (UBA) will open a new branch in Mali on Feb. 4, expanding in a region where it already operates in a dozen countries.
“Mali is a large market with a low (bank) account penetration rate,” Maimouna El Oumrany, spokeswoman for UBA’s Malian subsidiary, said by telephone. “We’re hoping to do better than the 13 banks already established in the country.”
El Oumrany said UBA’s strategy in Mali, a landlocked country on the edge of the Sahara, was focused on digital products that clients could access from their smartphones.
UBA, one of Nigeria’s largest banks with more than 700 branches, has subsidiaries across Africa in countries such as Ghana and Ivory Coast in the west, Kenya and Uganda in the east and Mozambique and Zambia in the south. It also has offices in London, Paris and New York. Reuters
