A report published on December 1st by Nouvelles Donnes confirmed that the growth of major French banking groups in Africa is declining compared to local actors.

The “BSEM 2015” or Banking Survey-Emerging Markets, a study conducted by the firm specialized in various development challenges in the banking and insurance sectors this year focused on Francophone Africa. It emerges from this study that two local groups currently dominate the market in this zone. These are Ecobank who holds 14% of market shares and Moroccan Attijariwafa Bank who has about 13% of these shares.

Parallel to the surprising rise of the two pan-African institutions, it has been observed that French banks lost a lot of ground on the market. Indeed, out of the “old” four present in the 80s namely, BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Crédit Lyonnais and Crédit Agricole, only two remain. For the top 10 of banks present in the area, French banks were the only ones to lose market shares since 2007. Société Générale and BNP Paribas lost about 3% of their market shares dropping to 8% and 5% respectively.

In Northern Africa, Nouvelles Donnes found out that BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Crédit Agricole together, barely do as well as Attijariwafa Bank.

According to Paul Derreumaux, economist and president of honor of Bank of Africa, the first mistake of French banks in Africa was to focus on big companies and high-class individuals while local banks were establishing as many branches as they could, ignoring customers’ class or status. Meanwhile, “French banks restricted account opening to expatriated and high-revenues nationals”, Derreumaux says.

The other mistake, he continues, is that these banks rushed to leave Africa in the 90s which were marked by economic and political crisis, to expand in Eastern Europe and Asia. “Since Eastern Europe, China and South America seemed to be promising lands, the leaders of French banks at the time pulled back from Africa,” says Derreumaux who believes that French banks will not be able to close the gap.