Former Ecobank CEO enters African microfinance

The move is something of a departure for Ekpe. While he has served as the CEO of two full-service pan-African banks – Ecobank and United Bank for Africa – and most recently proved instrumental to the inception of a third, Atlas Mara, Ekpe had never previously worked in microfinance.

In his first interview since the appointment was publicized, Ekpe tells Euromoney that he was eager to enter microfinance. He had been contemplating ways of moving into that area of finance for several years, and eventually set his sights on Microcred, a firm he says he first became aware of during his time at Ecobank, which he headed from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2005 to 2012.