Africa’s Treasury Transformation: How Currency Reforms Are Reshaping Corporate Strategy

Currency reforms, liquidity pressures, and new payment rails are compelling African CFOs to rethink corporate strategy.

When Nigeria liberalized the naira in June 2023, it triggered a chain reaction across the continent. Egypt sharply devalued the pound in March 2024 under an IMF-backed reform program, and Ethiopia dismantled decades of foreign-exchange controls four months later. Headlines focused on inflation, exchange-rate volatility, and political fallout.

Inside multinational boardrooms, however, a different conversation was taking shape.

Where should liquidity be held? CFOs and corporate treasurers asked. Can capital still be repatriated efficiently? Is local-currency borrowing now preferable to offshore funding? And should Africa continue to be managed as dozens of fragmented financial markets, or increasingly, as one integrated treasury landscape?

The answers are reshaping one of the least visible—but most strategically important—functions within multinational companies.

“Treasury efficiency has shifted from a secondary consideration to a first-order determinant: often the binding constraint, even when infrastructure and trade fundamentals appear sound,” said Phumlani Majozi, executive director of the African Markets Institute (AMI). “The logic is straightforward; multinationals prefer an environment where it’s easy to extract their capital when they need it.”

His observation reflects a profound shift in corporate thinking.

For decades, multinational companies evaluated Africa through a familiar lens: market size, consumer demand, infrastructure, labor costs, and political stability. More often nowadays, the decisive consideration is whether capital itself can move efficiently across the continent.

Treasury as Investment Influencer

The timing is significant.

Lending to Africa by China’s two principal policy banks has fallen dramatically, from US$28.8 billion in 2016 to US$2.1 billion in 2024, according to the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. As governments rely more on commercial finance and private capital to fund development, multinational companies have assumed greater responsibility for financing projects and managing liquidity across multiple jurisdictions.

The African Development Bank estimates that the continent requires some US$170 billion annually to finance infrastructure, but currently attracts only US$80 billion to US$90 billion, leaving a financing gap approaching US$80 billion each year. Against that backdrop, treasury has moved from supporting investment decisions to influencing them.

“The biggest change is that the treasurer is now expected to do far more than manage cash, funding, banking, and risk,” said Mike Richards, founder and CEO of The Treasury Recruitment Company. “Those things remain essential, but today’s treasurer is expected to help the CFO and the board understand what is happening, what the risks are, and what decisions need to be made.”

That evolution is especially evident across Africa.

Unlike Europe or North America, treasury teams operating on the continent must simultaneously navigate 54 sovereign jurisdictions, more than 40 actively used currencies, multiple exchange-rate regimes, and a complex web of banking regulations and capital controls. A finance executive overseeing operations stretching from Lagos to Nairobi and Johannesburg to Cairo may confront four entirely different monetary environments before the workday begins.

One subsidiary may hold surplus cash that cannot easily be repatriated because of foreign-exchange restrictions. Another may require emergency liquidity but operates in a market where access to hard currency remains constrained. Exchange-rate swings can rapidly inflate import costs or reduce earnings when profits are translated into dollars or euros.

“A company may appear to have plenty of cash across the group,” Richards said, “but that does not mean the cash is in the right place, in the right currency, or can be moved when the business needs it.”

That vexatious reality has become one of the defining operational challenges facing multinational companies in Africa. Because more companies are operating across the continent, treasury departments increasingly see fragmented pools of capital, each governed by different regulations, currency regimes, and banking systems.

These inefficiencies impose what amounts to a hidden investment tax, Majozi argues.

“When currency convertibility is uncertain,” he said, “intra-African capital movement is fragmented across more than 40 regulatory regimes, and hedging instruments for smaller African currencies are thin or nonexistent. Treasurers price in a liquidity-trapped capital discount before operational returns even enter the model. That discount frequently outweighs what improvements in infrastructure or regulation can offset.”

Technology is helping treasury teams respond.

“We have seen treasury teams become more data-driven in their analysis and execution of currency risk-management programs,” said Bob Stark, global head of market strategy at Kyriba. Greater visibility into balance-sheet and cash-flow exposures, he added, has enabled companies to strengthen natural hedging while making more efficient use of forward contracts and options.

AI is the logical next step.

“There is no AI strategy without a data strategy,” Stark said, noting that multinational companies are investing more in API-enabled treasury platforms that provide real-time tracking of liquidity, foreign-exchange exposure, and banking relationships across multiple African markets.

“The primary benefit of treasury management systems for African treasury teams remains improved visibility and forecasting that unlock and mobilize trapped cash,” he said.

Toward Regional Financial Integration

Regional treasury hubs are also becoming more important. Rather than allowing every subsidiary to manage liquidity independently, multinational companies are consolidating treasury oversight in centers such as Johannesburg, Dubai, and Casablanca, where funding, foreign-exchange management, and banking relationships can be coordinated across multiple jurisdictions while maintaining local execution teams.

Richards recently recruited a senior treasury executive who helped establish a regional treasury center covering 16 African countries, centralizing foreign-exchange management, implementing cash-pooling arrangements, and negotiating local funding facilities across markets including Nigeria and Zambia.

“It is no longer enough to understand treasury technically,” he said. “You also need to understand the markets, the business, and the people operating locally.”

The next stage of evolution may be driven by regional financial integration.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is working to create a single market worth approximately US$3.4 trillion while the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) aims to reduce the cost and complexity of settling cross-border transactions directly in African currencies.

“PAPSS solves a concrete, costly problem,” said Majozi. “Settling directly in local currencies cuts both cost and delay.”

Implementation remains uneven, he cautioned: “Multinationals will likely treat Africa-as-one-market as an aspiration for another five to 10 years, not a current operating reality.”

The direction of travel, however, is unmistakable. Africa’s abundant natural resources, favorable demographics, and expanding consumer markets will continue attracting global investors. Still, sustaining those investments will increasingly depend on modern financial infrastructure.

“Natural resources and favorable demographics may attract initial boardroom attention,” said Majozi. “But sustained, large-scale operational commitments depend on institutionalized monetary predictability, transparent capital flows, and efficient regional financial infrastructure.”

In Africa’s next chapter of economic integration, the competitive advantage may belong not simply to companies that understand the continent’s consumers, but to those that master the sophisticated movement of capital across its markets.

Charles Wachira is a contributing writer based in Kenya.

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