SME banking: Africa’s mid-market maverick

Hitesh Anadkat has spent the last 25 years building an African SME banking empire from scratch from his base in the Malawian city of Blantyre. His FMB Capital Group now also has operations in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Mauritius and Botswana; and he is looking to gain market share in them all.

Describe Hitesh Anadkat as a banker and he flinches a little. Businessman? If you like. Entrepreneur? Certainly. But banker or chief executive? For Anadkat, that’s a stretch.

“I’ve never been a full-time executive,” says the Malawian national behind emerging southern African banking powerhouse FMB Capital Group. “I’ve never been a CEO. I spend a majority of my working time on bank practice because we’ve got so many banks now so I get involved in certain credit decisions, but I’ve always been the entrepreneur behind it.

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