Portuguese lender Banco BPI is leaving Angola after 30 years, selling its remaining stake in Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA) for nearly $451 million. In other headlines: MultiChoice is overhauling DStv's packages, Ghana has launched a digital marriage records platform, and Mukuru has introduced a Visa-linked wallet card in Botswana.

Banking: Portuguese lender is leaving Angola after 30 years, selling its stake for $451 million

For a bank, exiting a country is a measured process rather than an abrupt shutdown. Banco BPI, a Portuguese commercial bank, has spent nearly a decade working to leave Angola, and after 30 years in the country it now appears ready to hand over the keys.

On September 3, Banco BPI agreed to sell its remaining 33.35% stake in Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA) to Congolian Financial SA (CFSA), a company owned by Angolan conglomerate Grupo Carrinho, for nearly $451 million. The transaction still requires approval from Angola's Central Bank and Capital Markets Commission. If approved, BPI will have sold its entire interest in BFA, formally ending its three-decade presence in Angola.

Background: BPI entered Angola in 1996, acquiring the Angolan operations of Portuguese lender Banco de Fomento e Exterior, which it eventually turned into BFA. BFA became a separately incorporated Angolan bank in July 2002, initially 100% controlled by BPI. In 2008, BPI sold 49.9% of BFA to Unitel, Angola's largest telecom operator. In 2017, it sold a further 2% to Unitel, ceding control of the bank to CaixaBank.

BPI's long effort to exit: BPI's attempts to reduce its Angola exposure predated the European Central Bank's 2017 intervention. In 2015, the bank said it planned to spin off its African assets into a separate entity to limit its exposure to Angolan risks. That followed European Union rules classifying Angolan credit and debt exposure as risky assets requiring full provisioning under European regulations.

In 2017, the ECB pushed BPI to further reduce its Angola exposure, citing concerns about Angola's banking supervision and capital requirements. BPI spent years searching for investors to buy its remaining 48.1% stake. Grupo Carrinho was among the potential buyers, but in 2023 a sharp depreciation of the Angolan Kwanza against the US Dollar complicated negotiations, and BPI eventually suspended the sale. In 2025, it found another route to shrink its position by listing on Angola's stock exchange, selling 14.75% of the bank through the listing and cutting its stake to the 33.35% it is now selling.

Who gets the keys? Grupo Carrinho began as a small catering business in 1993 and grew into one of Angola's largest agro-industrial groups. It is also becoming a serious player in banking, already owning 74% of Banco de Comércio e Indústria (BCI) and about 70% of Banco Keve. The deal represents a local conglomerate gaining a much bigger seat at one of the country's largest banks—and, more broadly, another chapter in the steady transfer of formerly foreign-owned African banking assets to local owners, a pattern also seen in Angola's telecom and retail sectors as international groups reassess their African portfolios.

Streaming: DStv reshuffles its channels and packages

MultiChoice, Africa's largest pay-TV operator, is changing its package lineup. From September 17, DStv is discontinuing the Compact Plus tier; sports gets its own package, and some channels previously locked inside Premium are becoming available in cheaper packages. Starter, Select, and Sports packages will replace the current Access, Family, and Compact packages, while a new Movies & Series package will also join the lineup.

Background: In August, MultiChoice announced it would shut down four DStv channels—M-Net Movies 1, Mzansi Bioskop, Mzansi Music, and KykNet Lekker—on September 16, replacing them with four new SuperSport channels focused on premium football and major African sporting events. Showmax has since been discontinued, while DStv Stream took centre stage; entertainment channels BET Africa and MTV Base were discontinued in January. The reshuffle is taking place under French owner Canal+, which completed its takeover of MultiChoice in 2024 after a months-long bid process, and the repackaging is among the most visible signs of the new owner reworking the business as global streaming platforms pressure traditional pay-TV across the continent.

What changes for subscribers:

• Access subscribers move to Starter at R150 ($9.40) monthly on satellite.
• Family becomes Select at R339 ($21.25).
• Compact subscribers move to Sports at R479 ($30.03) on satellite or R399 ($25.02) on DStv Stream, with access to 17 sports channels, including every Premier League and Champions League match, all cricket, and major local rugby competitions.
• Compact Plus subscribers will be moved to Premium, as Compact Plus is being discontinued. They will keep paying their current price for 12 months, after which they must decide whether to pay the new Premium price or switch to another package.

Why the change: DStv has observed subscribers downgrading when they can no longer justify expensive packages. Rather than forcing customers to choose between paying for channels they don't watch or cancelling altogether, MultiChoice is making packages more modular. Sports fans can pay for Sports without buying the full Premium bundle, while movie and entertainment fans can subscribe to Movies & Series. Cheaper, tailored packages give customers a reason to stay. What to watch next is whether the modular approach can hold subscribers in the market's most price-sensitive tiers—and how quickly Canal+'s restructuring of MultiChoice extends beyond packaging into pricing and content strategy across its other African markets.

Government: Ghana launches digital marriage records platform

Ghana has launched Marrify, a digital platform that lets people search and verify registered marriage and divorce records. It can also verify marriage officers, licensed venues, churches, pastors, and imams, while an AI assistant provides contextual information on Ghanaian marriage law.

Why it matters: Marrify turns marriage records—something people have largely had to chase through offices and institutions—into searchable digital infrastructure. That has clear value when verifying whether a prospective spouse has a registered marriage or divorce, and it also matters for inheritance, immigration, property disputes, court cases, and other situations where a person's legal marital status carries consequences. The same applies to checking whether a pastor, imam, marriage officer, or venue is actually authorised to conduct marriages.

There is a drawback: marriage and divorce records are sensitive personal information. Making them easier to access can reduce fraud and bureaucracy, but weak safeguards could make stalking, harassment, unwanted disclosure, and other misuse easier.

The bigger picture: Marrify says it pulls data from the Registrar-General's Department, courts, local assemblies, and the Ghana Gazette. For citizens, that could mean less running around government offices for basic verification. For courts and government agencies, it could mean faster document checks and fewer opportunities to exploit gaps between different records.

Marrify cannot, however, serve as an infallible marital-status database. Ghana recognises ordinance, customary, and Islamic marriages, which do not all follow the same registration process. A person not appearing in the database could mean they were never married—but it could also mean their marriage was registered elsewhere, the record has not yet been digitised or linked, or the entered information does not match the registry.

Ghana is demonstrating what digital government can look like when it addresses ordinary problems. The key questions are whether the country can build enough trust in the underlying data for the platform to be used credibly, and how much more of its public records can be digitised.

Fintech: Mukuru wants Botswana's phones to do more than receive money

Botswana has more mobile connections than people, yet a significant number of those people lack bank accounts. In 2025, there were about 4.22 million active mobile connections—nearly twice the country's population of 2.56 million—while about 650,000 adults are unbanked. Mukuru sees an opportunity in that mismatch.

In August, the remittance company launched its Companion Card in Botswana, giving customers a Visa card linked directly to their Mukuru Wallet. Money can move from the wallet to the supermarket, taxi, electricity bill, or online checkout without first passing through a bank account or cash point. Someone receiving money in their Mukuru Wallet can now pay directly from it wherever Visa is accepted, rather than withdrawing cash first.

State of play: Mukuru is betting that financial inclusion doesn't have to begin with a bank. Customers already using its wallet can now do more with it without changing how they receive money. Banks retain the edge in savings, credit, and other financial products, while wallets compete on access and simplicity—a gap Mukuru is trying to close. It is a playbook already familiar across African fintech, where wallet providers have used card links to extend remittance and mobile-money rails into everyday commerce.

The bigger opportunity lies in customer behaviour. A company that simply helps customers receive money only processes a transaction; a company whose wallet is used for groceries, transport, and bills builds a deeper relationship. If Mukuru can make its wallet part of everyday spending, the Companion Card becomes more than a convenient way to spend remittances—it becomes a way to turn a remittance product into a genuine alternative to a bank account.

Crypto Tracker: The World Wide Web3

Tracked coins showed the following day/month moves: –0.21% / +22.89%; –0.18% / +30.89%; +9.80% / +111.04%; –0.97% / +41.45%.

Data as of 06:41 AM WAT, September 8, 2026.

Events

The Building Beyond You Institute will host the second edition of the Building Beyond You Conference on September 25, 2026, at the Eko Convention Center, Lagos. Convened by House of Tara founder Tara Fela-Durotoye, the one-day event will bring together founders, business owners, and executives to discuss building companies that can scale beyond their founders, with GTBank co-founder and FATE Foundation Chairman Fola Adeola as headline keynote speaker. The conference expects 2,500 attendees, up from 1,381 at its sold-out 2025 edition, and will explore succession, governance, leadership, and later-stage business transitions.

OffChart NXT is bringing startups, investors, and business leaders together in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, on October 22–23. As part of the event, its Startup Challenge will give early-traction and early-growth founders a chance to compete for a share of a ₦30 million ($18,000) prize pool, with selected startups progressing to pitch and investor conversations. Applications close by September 13.

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Written by Yemi Kareem and Emmanuel Nwosu; edited by Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade.