The September 2026 Acquisition Report

Oct 3, 2026 @BNWK

The month in one line

September 2026 was the month East African deals stopped being announcements and started being transactions. Three of the region's largest pending transactions cleared their decisive regulatory gates within three weeks of each other, while global dealmaking produced its own run of signatures — Nvidia's $12.9 billion purchase of Hugging Face among them.

That distinction matters more than the headline numbers. A deal announced is a negotiating position. A deal cleared by a central bank, a treasury and a competition authority is a change of ownership with a date attached. September delivered the second kind.

For anyone who owns a business in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda or Rwanda, the month is worth studying for a specific reason: the buyers were overwhelmingly strategic, the prices were concentrated in a handful of large assets, and the smaller deals — the ones nobody wrote about — tell you far more about what a mid-sized East African business is actually worth right now.

East Africa: the month the big deals became real

Four transactions defined September in the region, and three of them involve banks.

Nedbank and NCBA — approvals substantially complete

On 1 September, NCBA confirmed that the Central Bank of Kenya had approved South Africa's Nedbank Group taking up to 66% of the lender, with the approval itself granted on 28 August under Section 13(4) of the Banking Act. NCBA described it as an important milestone in the transaction's progression, and Nedbank said most required approvals had now been obtained, with the remainder expected by the end of Q3.

The mechanics are instructive. When the partial tender offer closed in July, shareholders tendered 1.32 billion shares — 79.9% of NCBA's issued capital — well above the 66% Nedbank sought, forcing a scale-back to roughly 1.09 billion shares. The consideration is structured at around 20% cash and 80% newly issued Nedbank stock. NCBA keeps its Nairobi listing with 34% of shares in public hands.

The headline value sits between $842 million and $856 million depending on the exchange rate used at the time of reporting, against a South African rand figure of R13.9 billion. Nedbank gains exposure to NCBA's operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, plus digital lending businesses in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

Asahi and EABL — competition clearance, with conditions

On 10 September, the Competition Authority of Kenya approved Diageo's sale of its 65% stake in East African Breweries to Japan's Asahi Group Holdings, a $2.3 billion transaction first announced in December 2025. Approval came with conditions: Bloomberg reported the authority required money to be set aside to settle liabilities arising after completion.

Two things are worth noting. First, ownership had not transferred and consideration had not been paid as of the approval — clearance removed the largest hurdle, not the last one. Second, this is Asahi's first direct operating presence in Africa, and it completes a pattern: Diageo has already exited Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Ethiopia and the Seychelles.

Access Bank and NBK — the Treasury signs off

Access Bank's Kenyan consolidation moved forward on 21 September when the National Treasury approved the transfer of Access Bank Kenya's business into National Bank of Kenya, following the Central Bank's approval on 17 August. The sequence completes a transaction that began when Access acquired 100% of NBK from KCB Group in 2025 for roughly $109.6 million, with the larger and profitable NBK becoming the surviving institution.

KCB and Pesapal — a number finally surfaces

The most interesting disclosure of the month came not from Kenya but from Tanzania. On 22 September, reporting based on a notice from Tanzania's Fair Competition Commission revealed that KCB Group is acquiring 22.23% of digital payments firm Pesapal — a figure KCB had declined to disclose when it announced the agreement in October 2025.

The FCC published its notice because KCB's purchase of shares in Pesapal's Kenyan parent creates indirect control over Pesapal Tanzania. Pesapal is licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya and operates in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zambia, serving retail, hospitality, travel, petroleum and manufacturing clients.

Founders should read this one carefully. A deal structured and announced in Kenya had its commercial terms made public by a regulator in another country, eleven months later, because the target had a subsidiary there. Cross-border structures do not keep secrets.

East Africa in September, at a glance

Two caveats on reading this table. First, several of these are approvals of deals announced months or years earlier — September was a clearing month, not an announcing one. Second, the disclosed values are heavily concentrated: Kenya's $1.44 billion in first-half 2026 M&A came overwhelmingly from three transactions, which together accounted for 91% of reported value.

That concentration is the single most important fact in this report, and the rest of the document returns to it.

The rest of the continent: small, strategic, mostly undisclosed

Below the billion-dollar line, September produced a steady run of transactions where the price was never published. This is the part of the market most East African founders will actually trade in.

African-Startups' acquisitions index carries the full run. The pattern across them is consistent: buyers are acquiring a capability, a licence or a team, and paying prices small enough that nobody is required to disclose them.

A few threads worth pulling.

Licences are the asset. This has been the defining African fintech trend of 2026, and September extended it. Earlier in the year, Moniepoint acquired 78% of Kenya's Sumac Microfinance Bank and Tanzania's Selcom took 65% of Access Microfinance Bank — in both cases the fintech founders stayed in control. Buying a regulated entity has become faster and more certain than applying for the licence.

Non-African buyers are entering through acquisition, not greenfield. Alan in Senegal and Replit's purchase of an Egyptian-founded team are the September examples. The cheapest route into an African market in 2026 is to buy a company that is already in it.

Context is the product. The micro-acquisition wave running through African AI — small teams bought for domain knowledge rather than revenue — continued through the month. These are acqui-hires in substance, and the valuations reflect team quality, not earnings.

One larger African transaction also sat in motion through September: investment group Augustus Capital is pursuing 70% of Zimbabwean mobile operator Telecel for $175 million, buying out stakes previously held by Empowerment Corporation and the Mutapa Investment Fund.

The global picture

September's largest deal was also its most consequential for technology. On 2 September, Nvidia entered a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face, confirmed publicly the following day. The 8-K puts the structure at roughly $11.9 billion payable to stockholders plus an equity retention programme of up to about $1.0 billion for employees joining Nvidia — $12.9 billion in total, with closing expected in the first half of 2027. Nvidia committed in the filing to keeping the platform open and supporting rival silicon vendors, which tells you exactly which regulatory objection it expects.

The month's other notable signatures:

Sources: Acquiry's Q3 2026 global report, Intellizence, ISI Markets.

Two structural observations from the quarter's data. Acquiry counted $60.4 billion of verified disclosed value across just nine Q3 deals with a published price, led by Aon's $17 billion for USI — and two transactions alone made up 52.6% of that total, with insurance, wealth and professional services taking 49.2%. Six of the nine were paid in cash.

The second observation: the AI deals of the quarter were not about models. Stripe's reported purchase of OpenRouter, Analog Devices buying Alif, Nvidia buying Hugging Face — these are bets on routing, billing, silicon and distribution. The infrastructure around intelligence is being bought; the intelligence itself mostly is not.

Media consolidation also reached a resolution of sorts. On 21 September, Paramount reached an out-of-court settlement over its $110.9 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, subject to a five-year consent decree covering film investment, exhibitor relationships and editorial independence at CBS News and CNN.

Five patterns worth reading twice

1. Deal value is up; deal count is not. Kenya led Africa on M&A value in the first half of 2026 with $1.44 billion, ahead of Nigeria, which recorded 39 transactions — fourteen more than Kenya — but only $105.8 million in disclosed value. Kenya's lead comes from the size of a few assets, not from a broad rise in dealmaking. If you own a mid-sized business, the headline numbers are not describing your market.

2. Buyers are paying for distribution and licences, not technology. Aon bought USI for client relationships. Uber bought Delivery Hero for geography. Nedbank bought NCBA for a regional banking platform. Moniepoint and Selcom bought banks for licences. Across every market size in September, the premium went to things that cannot be built quickly: regulatory permissions, customer relationships, physical reach.

3. Most prices are never published. Of the African transactions in September, the large majority carried no disclosed value. This is the single biggest structural problem for East African founders: without comparable multiples, you cannot know whether an offer is fair. You are negotiating against a buyer who has seen fifty deals while you have seen one.

4. Private buyers are paying far above public-market prices. The Baldwin Group take-private was struck at an 88% premium to its unaffected close; KKR's bid for Integer carried a 51.8% premium. The gap between what listed markets will pay and what a motivated private buyer will pay is wide, and it is widest for businesses with recurring revenue and high switching costs.

5. Clearance is a process, not an event. Nedbank's NCBA deal needed the CBK. Asahi's EABL deal needed the CAK, with conditions attached. Access Bank's NBK consolidation needed both the CBK and the National Treasury. KCB's Pesapal stake needed Tanzania's FCC. Note that Kenya's merger regime applies a public-interest test alongside the competition test, examining employment, SME competitiveness and industrial capacity, and has imposed employment-retention conditions in high-profile cases. Budget for this in your timeline, not as an afterthought.

What this means if you own a business in East Africa

Every transaction in this report was priced by someone. In almost every case below the headline deals, that price is invisible to you.

That asymmetry is the reason most East African founders sell badly. A buyer with regional reach has looked at dozens of businesses in your sector and knows what they trade for. You have your accountant's valuation and a number you heard at a conference. The gap between those two things is where value disappears.

September showed what the other side of that gap looks like when it is closed properly. Nedbank ran a tender, was oversubscribed at 79.9%, and scaled back to the stake it wanted. Asahi's price was set in December and survived nine months of regulatory review intact. These are processes, run to a timetable, with advisers on both sides.

Acquihub exists to put that same discipline on the seller's side of an East African deal. We do three things:

• Valuation. What your business is actually worth to a strategic buyer, benchmarked against real regional comparables rather than a textbook multiple.

• Exit orchestration. Running a competitive process rather than responding to a single approach — the difference between the price you are offered and the price you could get.

• Value advisory. Working on the things buyers pay premiums for, before you go to market: recurring revenue, transferable customer relationships, clean regulatory standing, and a management team that survives the handover.

If you are thinking about an exit in the next eighteen months, the work starts now, not when the offer arrives.

This report covers transactions announced, approved or completed during September 2026 and is current as of 3 October 2026. Deal values are as reported by the sources linked above; where a figure is described as reported rather than disclosed, it has not been confirmed in a regulatory filing. Nothing here is investment, legal or tax advice.