Absa to lift Kenya unit stake to 85% in $239m tender

Absa Group plans to raise its stake in its Kenyan unit to 85% through a R3.93 billion tender offer, underscoring its confidence in East Africa’s growth prospects.

The Johannesburg-based lender will offer 34.50 shillings ($0.27) per share for an additional 16.5% of the Absa Kenya Plc, it said in an emailed statement on Thursday. That’s a premium of 20% to the Nairobi-listed company’s volume weighted average price in the 30 days to June 17, it said.

Absa Group’s shares were 0.1% lower at 10:09 a.m. on Friday in Johannesburg while Absa Kenya’s stock jumped as much as 12%, before paring gains to 10.5%.

Some of Africa’s biggest lenders are eying Kenya as a gateway into East Africa’s fast-growing but underbanked economies. Nedbank Group. announced in January it would buy a majority stake in NCBA Group Plc for around R13.9 billion ($842 million).

The African Development Bank estimates East Africa’s economy will grow at 5.9% this year, outpacing all the other regions on the continent.

Absa “regards East Africa as a cornerstone of its pan-African growth ambitions,” the lender said. Its Africa regions contributed nearly a third of headline earnings in 2025.

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The group intends to maintain Absa Kenya’s listing on the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

The announcement is “strategically positive” for Absa Group as it increases its economic exposure to one of Africa’s fastest-growing banking markets and a franchise with high return on equity, according to RMB Morgan Stanley analyst James Starke.

Absa Kenya’s ROE was 23% last year, compared with 14.9% for the group. The business contributed about 9% of the group’s earnings in 2025, and the incremental stake could add another 2%, Starke wrote in a note to clients.