ASINT / Finance and Institutions
The Licences and What They Cover
United Capital Plc secured investment banking licences in Ethiopia and Rwanda in June 2026, becoming the first foreign institution licensed to provide investment banking services in Ethiopia. The services covered financial advisory, securities brokerage and portfolio management. The Ethiopian Capital Market Authority confirmed the licence was issued on June 5, 2026, bringing the total number of licensed capital market service providers in Ethiopia to 18, including seven investment banks. The Ethiopian licence came shortly after United Capital secured regulatory approval from the Rwanda Capital Market Authority to provide trust services, investment banking and portfolio management services in that market.
United Capital’s Director for Africa Ejikeme Okoli stated that the licences expand the group’s footprint to 12 countries within West, East and Central Africa.
Two Different Market Bets
The Ethiopia and Rwanda licences are not the same bet dressed in the same announcement. They represent two distinct market theses operating in parallel.
Ethiopia is a scale play. The Ethiopian Capital Market Authority formalised the United Capital licence as Ethiopia presses ahead with the most sweeping liberalisation of its financial sector in half a century. Ethiopia officially launched trading on the Ethiopian Securities Exchange in July 2025, creating regulated trading channels for government securities and equities. For a country of 130 million people with an economy that has grown above 6% annually for the better part of two decades, the capital market infrastructure is embryonic. United Capital is not entering a mature market at a late stage. It is entering a market at formation, which is both the highest-upside and highest-execution-risk position. Okoli acknowledged that replicating the scale of United Capital’s Nigerian operations in such a short timeframe would be ambitious, given those capabilities were built over roughly 60 years, but said the opportunity set is compelling.
Rwanda is a gateway play. United Capital’s Director for Africa characterised Rwanda as one of Africa’s most business-friendly markets, describing it as a kind of Geneva of Africa — a small, landlocked but well-governed jurisdiction that can serve as a safe and efficient base for regional and global operations. For foreign institutions, Rwanda offers fewer regulatory frictions and the flexibility to serve clients beyond the domestic market. Rwanda’s economy grew 8.9% in 2024, supported by services, industry and a rebound in agriculture. The Kigali International Financial Centre has been built explicitly as a platform for pan-African deal structuring. United Capital’s Rwanda licence is less about the Rwandan domestic market than about the institutional credibility of operating from a well-regulated hub to serve clients across East and Central Africa.
What the Move Signals Beyond United Capital
The strategic significance of this expansion extends beyond a single company’s licensing decision. The expansion underscores a broader trend of cross-border integration within Africa’s financial services sector, with Nigerian institutions increasingly leveraging regional agreements under the African Continental Free Trade Area to scale operations beyond domestic markets.
Nigerian financial institutions have historically been dominant within West Africa. United Capital’s East Africa expansion — alongside the Ecobank and Afreximbank deepening of Asia engagement covered earlier this month — reflects a structural shift in how African capital is beginning to move. The argument being made operationally, not just rhetorically, is that African-headquartered institutions with deep continent-specific expertise are better positioned to advise, structure and execute African transactions than the global institutions that have historically dominated African investment banking mandates.
United Capital’s six-decade operating history, listed-company status and transparent financial disclosures were all part of the value proposition that Ethiopian regulators explicitly recognised in granting the first foreign investment banking licence. That the first foreign institution to receive an Ethiopian investment banking licence is Nigerian rather than European or American is a data point about which direction African financial sector integration is actually moving.
The Revenue Timeline
United Capital’s director for Africa expects the newly established businesses in East and Central Africa to be profitable within three to five years, saying 2026 could mark an inflection point at the group level. The three-to-five-year timeline is realistic for nascent markets, but it also means United Capital is absorbing cost now for returns that will materialise — if the Ethiopia and Rwanda reform trajectories hold — in the early 2030s. The political risk embedded in that timeline is real in Ethiopia specifically, where the securities exchange is less than a year old and the broader economic liberalisation agenda has proceeded in parallel with ongoing regional security challenges. Rwanda’s political risk profile is lower, but the concentration of power that makes Rwanda predictable also makes it non-diversifiable.