• Print
• Email

During the meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office, Dr Paul K. Fokam officially anounced that Afriland First Group has taken over Access Bank Côte d’Ivoire and has injected  CFAF 17 billion into the bank’s capital, which now moves from CFAF 20 to 38 billion.

Omnifinance and Cauris Investissement now hold 3% of the remaining shares. At the end of the audience, Dr Paul K. Fokam stated that Afriland First Bank Côte d’Ivoire intends to focus on promoting the entrepreneur and the enterprise, including SMEs. « I am here to than the Prime Minister. Actually, this isn’t my first visit. During my first visit, I presented the project to him. Today it has become a reality. That’s why I felt obliged to come and express our group’s gratitude to him for the prompt reaction of the government of the Ivory Coast and the acceleration of business activities. The project the take over of a bank. Afriland First Group has taken over Access Bank Côte d’Ivoire for about CFAF 17 billion, and today we have proceeded with the removal of all Access Bank’s emblems from all the premises.

We now have Afriland First Bank’s  emblems and have a completely clean bank for which I’ll maintain our slogan: « We put the customer’s interest first. »

We’ll concentrate mainly on promoting the enterprise and the entrepreneur. I don’t mean just the big enterprise, I also have the SMEs in mind. You know, by definition, the enterpise is a job creating unit. For the bank, however, it is not the number of jobs that it creates that matters, rather it is the number of jobs that it helps create that is most important.  As far as we are concerned we’ll hire fifty or so staffs in the immediate term and 150 in a year. We’re equally working toward expanding our business to the hinterland, that is, stimulating wealth creation among the poor. The Prime Minister is very much interested in this project and he would like us to re-examine it in a month or later. It is then that we’ll able to assess the opportunity for the creation of jobs, which may be in their thousands. »

Source : http://www.gouv.ci/actualite_1.php?recordID=4255