United Bank for Africa Plc’s Ivorian unit more than doubled net profit, overtaking Cameroon as the Lagos-based lender’s biggest contributor in 2025, while the rest of the continent shielded the pan-African group from a collapse in its core Nigerian home market.
United Bank for Africa Plc, the Lagos-listed lender operating in 20 African countries, said its Ivorian subsidiary delivered 125 billion naira ($83 million) in net profit in 2025. This is more than double the 55.8 billion naira posted a year earlier and ahead of Cameroon’s 41.5 billion naira, according to the bank’s audited financial statements published Friday.
The reordering at the top of UBA’s African league table marks the first time Côte d’Ivoire has overtaken Cameroon as the group’s largest profit contributor in recent years. The Ivorian unit’s profit before tax surged 121% to 126.6 billion naira while the Cameroonian operation, the leader in 2024, saw its pre-tax earnings drop 36% to 61.9 billion naira, the filing showed. Ghana ranked second on pre-tax profit at 78.2 billion naira, up from 22.2 billion in 2024.
“With deliberate steps we have taken to reposition our Nigerian operations, we are well placed to cautiously drive risk asset growth in line with improving macroeconomic conditions,” Ugo Nwaghodoh, UBA’s executive director for finance and risk management, said in a statement accompanying the results. The 19-subsidiary African network outside Nigeria contributed 677 billion naira in pre-tax profit, up 26%, as growth across smaller markets offset the Cameroon decline.
The shift underscores how UBA’s pan-African footprint has become its main earnings cushion as the group navigates the worst year for Nigerian banking since the 2024 currency reforms. Nigeria, the lender’s home market, swung to a pre-tax loss of 1.7 billion naira in 2025 from a 364 billion naira profit a year earlier, the largest reversal among the bank’s geographies and a result the group did not flag in its press release.
Africa engine
Group pre-tax profit fell 47% to 423 billion naira, while net profit dropped to 405 billion naira from 767 billion. The Nigerian unit took 306 billion naira in loan-loss provisions, up 51%, after the Central Bank of Nigeria dismantled pandemic-era forbearance rules that had allowed lenders to defer recognizing stressed loans. The CBN’s parallel recapitalization drive forced UBA to raise 395 billion naira in fresh equity through a rights issue concluded in September 2025.
Côte d’Ivoire’s leap came partly from a 36 billion naira net impairment writeback, a reversal of provisions taken in earlier years that boosted operating income. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the country’s economy to grow 6.4% in 2026, the fastest pace in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). UBA’s Ivorian unit now holds 2.37 trillion naira in assets, slightly above the Cameroonian subsidiary’s 2.05 trillion naira and larger than the parent’s stake in any other foreign market.
The 2024 results also benefited from one-time foreign-exchange gains tied to the Nigerian naira’s devaluation, gains that reversed in 2025 as the currency stabilized. Cameroon, where economic growth has slowed to about 4% on weaker oil output and security pressures in the country’s English-speaking regions, recorded an 18 billion naira impairment charge for the year, compared with a 1.7 billion naira gain in 2024, the bank disclosed.
The group’s gains in the Côte d’Ivoire and across smaller West African franchises echo trends at competitors. Pan-African lender Ecobank Transnational Inc. and South Africa’s Standard Bank Group Ltd. have flagged Francophone West Africa as one of their fastest-growing regions, helped by oil and gas projects in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire and by the stable CFA franc currency.
UBA operates in five of the eight WAEMU member states, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. Its next disclosure is due in May, when investors will scrutinize whether recoveries on the 350 billion naira in Stage 3 loans booked in 2025 have begun to feed through to earnings.
Idriss Linge
