(Business in Cameroon) – French retailer Carrefour has sold its remaining 5% stake in African joint venture Adialéa to partner CFAO, completing its withdrawal from the venture in July 2025, according to Jeune Afrique.
Carrefour, which originally owned 45% of the company when it was founded in 2013, has now fully exited.
“Adialéa is now 100% owned by CFAO,” confirmed Franck Rouquet, CEO of CFAO Consumer, speaking to Jeune Afrique. The sale follows Carrefour’s recent exit from its retail operations in Senegal.
Now in full control, CFAO plans to continue operating Adialéa under the Carrefour brand license.
“We have the expertise and financial capacity to keep investing and growing, even without Carrefour as a partner,” Rouquet said.
Strategic Shift and Financial Strains in Cameroon
Under CFAO’s leadership, Adialéa is refocusing on smaller, more profitable formats such as Carrefour Market and Carrefour Express. The company has shifted away from large hypermarkets, favoring smaller stores that are better suited to local conditions and more competitive against the informal sector, according to Julien Garcier, director of Sagaci Research.
Adialéa operates in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, but its main financial pressures appear in Cameroon. On June 23, 2025, the Cameroonian subsidiary carried out a two-step capital restructuring: a 5.11 billion CFA franc capital increase temporarily raised share capital to 8.92 billion, followed by an equivalent reduction to offset losses accumulated by December 31, 2024.
The move underscores the depth of Adialéa’s financial difficulties. It is not the first such measure. In 2022, about 3.8 billion CFA francs in losses were wiped out through a similar operation. These repeated restructurings suggest the subsidiary has posted losses for several consecutive years amid fierce
Amina Malloum
