Co-operative Bank of Kenya (Kenya): Owners by direction, not by market
After Kenya's independence, the government directed cooperative societies to put their deposits in one bank and to buy its shares. Co-operative Bank of Kenya opened in January 1968. From about 1996 it paid no dividend for seven years. It listed in Nairobi in 2008, and for 2025 reported a record profit before tax of 40.3 billion shillings. The cooperative movement still holds about two thirds, through one society. Shareholders have been asked to approve a new parent company. A move to charge its chief executive over an alleged loss at another firm is paused by High Court orders; no court has made any finding.
26 Oct 2026
MAX (Metro Africa Xpress) (Nigeria): From the trip to the machine
MAX began in Lagos at the turn of 2016 delivering parcels on twenty motorcycles, started by two Nigerian students from MIT Sloan. In 2018 it began financing motorcycles to its riders. When Lagos restricted motorcycle taxis and tricycles across major areas in February 2020, Rest of World reported that MAX was left with $6.7 million of motorcycles that could no longer be used there, and nearly two thousand riders were laid off. Today it assembles electric two and three wheelers in Ibadan, runs battery swap stations and lends the vehicles to drivers. Its chief executive says it is profitable in Nigeria; no profit figure or repayment terms have been published.
24 Oct 2026
Yassir (Algeria): Every yes went to the company
Yassir started in Algiers in 2017 as a ride hailing app, founded by Noureddine Tayebi and Mahdi Yettou, and grew into a super app for deliveries, groceries and payments. Tayebi called his idea banking as a platform: earn people's trust with everyday services, then carry their money. Y Combinator admitted it, investors put 150 million dollars into a 2022 round, a Paris court chose it as one of three buyers of Flink France, and in 2026 it bought the Uno hypermarkets from Cevital. Algeria taxes the platform, but its drivers still have no legal status. A bill described as finalised had not been confirmed in force as of March 2026.
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