By Dipo Olowookere
It was a night of honour for founder of Interswitch Group, Mr Mitchell Elegbe, and some others at the 2019 African Banker Awards held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.
He was among those who won awards at an event held on the fringes of the Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB), establishing himself as the Oscars of African banking and finance industry in Africa.
At the gala night, Mr Elegbe emerged winner of the African Banker Icon award. His firm, a payments service provider, has been predicted to be Africa’s first Africa-led unicorn – tech start up whose value exceeds $1 billion.
Other winners of the night were Afreximbank, which won Bank of the Year, while President of Trade and Development Bank (TDB), Mr Ethiopian Admassu Tadesse, won African Banker of the Year.
TDB has grown its portfolio five-fold since Mr Tadesse took over as President, largely increasing its presence in East and Southern Africa, where it operates. Afreximbank in the past 18 months has launched a number of game changing products.
This year’s lifetime achievement went to former First Rand Group CEO, South African Sizwe Nxasana. Under his leadership, the bank grew at a compound annual growth rate of 20%. In his acceptance speech, he called for even greater investment in human capital if we wanted to accelerate growth on the continent.
Egyptian Central Bank Governor, Tarek Amer won Central Bank Governor of the Year, for his work in restoring faith in Egypt’s markets and contributing to making it one of the fastest growing economies in the world and one of the best performing emerging markets.
Romuald Wadagni from Benin won Finance Minister of the Year. He has managed to considerably improve the country’s macro-economic indicators as well as embarked on a number of reforms to structurally transform of the economy.
South African banks dominated the investment banking and deals of the year categories. Absa won Investment Bank of the Year. Standard Bank and RMB won the equity deal of the year with the VIVO Energy IPO.
Deal of the year in the debt category went to Rothschild & Co for the Senegal $2.2 billion equivalent dual-currency Eurobond and Credit Agricole and TDB’s financing of the Floating LNG platform in Mozambique won the infrastructure Deal of the Year.
In other categories, Ecobank won Retail Bank of the year; Kenya’s KCB won the prize for innovation and Equity Bank for its CSR activities. Nigeria’s Bank of Industry won the prize for Financial Inclusion.
Commenting on the impressive achievements of the banks shortlisted for the 2019 awards, Omar Ben Yedder, Publisher of African Banker said: “We’ve been following the work of the financial services industry for many years. The sector over the years has seen great returns, and 2018 was another strong year for banks.
“Undoubtedly FinTech was the most buoyant sector in terms of tech investments and we are yet to truly see the transformative impact it can have.
“Despite the positive stories from the banking sector, the words of the winner of our Banker of the Year still resonate when he said last year at the Africa Investment Forum: we need to speed up, scale up and synergise.”
Modupe Gbadeyanka 
Aduragbemi Omiyale