UK headquartered Barclays said on 1 September it had sold its remaining 7.4% stake in South African lender for £538m, marking the banking group's almost complete departure from the continent after more than 100 years of operating there.
The exit marks the final step in Barclays' plans to withdraw the vast majority of its presence from Africa, after former head Jes Staley said in 2016 the firm would shift to focus more of its efforts on the US and Britain.
It sold a 62% stake in Barclays Africa, which was a merger of Absa and Barclay's African operations and counted around 45,000 employees - a third of all Barclays staff prior to the exit.
Absa controls banks in 10 African countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Botswana and Tanzania, serving millions of customers.
The shift in focus toward its core markets also involved proposals to shutter some of the lender's smaller operations in Asia, Brazil, Europe and Russia.
Barclays said the proceeds of the sale of its remaining shares in Absa will be channelled into general corporate purposes.
Barclays was South Africa's biggest lender until 1986 when it quit the country in the midst of apartheid, before restarting its operations in the country with its corporate and investment banking division in 1995. It restarted its retail banking operation in the country in 2005.
Its only presence in Africa will now be reduced to a representative office in Johannesburg which is able to support its investment, private and corporate banking clients. In 2020, the private bank was granted a licence in South Africa to offer offshore services to clients located in South Africa.
