Catching Feelings for Ethiopia ☺️

Welcome to the 87th edition of ፍራንክ Digest!

Your weekly brief on all things Finance and Investing. Quick, enjoyable reads for busy professionals in 5 minutes or less.

Here’s what’s coming your way:

• ⚡️BUZZ: Ethiopia Keeps Catching Big Banks’ Attention

• ♥️ Investing In Local Businesses

• 🖼️ Big Picture

Thanks for reading!

BUZZ: Zenith Bank Has Entered The Chat

Banking

The Story in Three Lines

→ Big African banks keep looking at Ethiopia. This time it’s Nigeria’s Zenith Bank.
→ They’re not rushing to open branches but they’re positioning for some sort of presence.
→ For Ethiopian bank shareholders, this is encouraging news, with a small warning label attached.

Doing Their Homework on Ethiopia

If you’ve been reading ፍራንክ Digest lately, Ethiopia keeps showing up in conversations about foreign banks.

We’ve already talked about Standard Bank getting their existing presence re-licensed. We’ve talked about the Kenyan banks eyeing acquisitions and partnerships. We’ve covered Nigeria’s FirstBank seeing what’s what. Now reports suggest Zenith Bank is exploring the Ethiopian market.

Economists with PhDs and very serious facial expressions might call this pattern recognition.

After all, Ethiopia sits in a very specific category that bankers love. Huge population. Still underbanked. Growing corporates. And a financial system that everyone agrees will open up more over time. You don’t need everything to be perfect. You just need it to be inevitable.

ትዕግስት ብቻ.

Who is this Zenith Bank?