PwC risk leads to mass exodus of Francophone Africa

PwC risk analysts have suddenly decided it’s not worth staying in over a dozen countries. It’s a big corporate governance call, but why has it happened? 

It’s a broad recalibration of regional strategy, culminating in recent efforts to minimise exposure to a region with a unique set of corporate risks. 

Firms as large as PricewaterhouseCoopers can often find themselves facing similar conundrums. They’re symptoms of how complex it can get to manage vast international networks, where rules change the moment you cross each international border. 

There are various options available to firms in these scenarios, and PwC has gone cold turkey, opting to get out in a hurry and pick up any pieces later. 

Let’s analyse what’s going on:

• An extremely brief statement from PwC in mid-April 2025 announced that the firm had ceased operations in Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Cameroon, DRC, Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Guinea, Senegal and Equatorial Guinea. 
• A Financial Times article covering the separation also mentioned that the firm had also ceased operations in Zimbabwe, Fiji, and Malawi earlier in the year. 
• It brings the total number of countries removed from PwC’s books to 12. 
• PwC offered no reason for the move, but stressed the company would maintain a “strong presence” in Africa through its partner organisations in other countries.

Without official reasoning from the company itself, we have to look at the context around the announcement. The Financial Times, with sources on the ground and familiar with PwC’s thought process, was able to shed more light on this. 

Like any big governance decision, the answer seems to be a combination of factors:

• PwC had previously asked partners in affected countries to cut ties with risky clients some years ago. 
• Those local partners subsequently complained that they had lost more than a third of their business. 
• Separately, it is understood that PwC was unhappy with the balance between the amount of time and money invested in compliance in the affected countries and the scale of profits coming from these countries. 

So, it would appear the firm made a decision because it was no longer happy with its risk profile, and didn’t think the measures needed to lessen the risk were worth it.

There’s no right or wrong at this stage of decision-making. The only certainty is that some stakeholders will be happy, and others – chiefly those on the ground in the affected countries – will be less so. 

What’s essential is that PwC’s leadership can justify the move, both to themselves and stakeholders, who are likely peering overhead and wondering what the board and executives are doing about weak spots in the company’s risk profile. 

Moving to cut ties in regions with riskier clients means the company is likely concerned about the prospect of fresh scandals. 

This is natural, and a big issue of modern governance. Rules are getting stronger, they stretch across international borders, and the punishments for breaking them are more severe. PwC itself knows how lax governance can unravel very fast. From a client exodus in China, to tax issues in Australia, and a breakdown in relations with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the company has its fair share of headaches to recover from. It will likely decide it doesn’t need more where the risk is too great. 

Recently, the company took on fresh leadership with Mohamed Kande assuming the role of global chair in July 2024. It coincided with the beginning of a surge in share price for the company, which reached a five-year high of $89 in November and has been hovering close to it since. 

The firm’s leadership is likely very concerned with maintaining this positive momentum while dealing with past scandals and ensuring no new ones surface in the meantime. In this context, the idea of simply exiting a dozen markets at once, especially since they’re not overly profitable, seems like a good move for the company.

This is a risk-management story, and a big example of how to deal with it. 

The lesson lies in the factors you may need to analyse when making a decision like this in your own company. Circumstances and specifics will always be different, but if you’re on the board of a firm with multi-national operations, and the possibility arises that you might cut and run from several countries in one quick move, it’s essential to know the background to your decision and the questions to ask yourself. 

• What’s the risk like? Do you have a clear picture of the profile on the ground, especially if your board is thousands of kilometres away? 
• Has the company taken steps already to mitigate that risk? How are those steps going? Are there progress reports you can consult? 
• How much more time and money will you need to invest to bring that risk down to an acceptable level? 
• Is that time and money worth it if you also have the option to quit those local markets completely? 
• Finally (and firms may forget this question in the rush for action), what might the potential medium-term to long-term losses be if you exit multiple markets at once? Are you missing out on new opportunities? Will you create a reputational risk in other areas?

The board’s job is to ask questions and make big calls based on available answers. The ones above will be what PwC considered before quitting multiple markets simultaneously. 

There’s no automatic indicator as to whether it was right or wrong, because governance doesn’t work that way. The only important thing is that you can justify past decisions and prepare for future ramifications.