Overview:
As Stanbic marks 35 years in Uganda, executives trace the bank's path from a war-scarred 1991 economy to a leading financier of productive sectors.
When Standard Bank Group entered Uganda in 1991, it was buying into a country still emerging from years of conflict and economic collapse — a market most investors were avoiding.
The Kampala of that year was a city of mostly single-storey buildings housing modest businesses: video libraries, photo studios, salons and dairy shops. Along Kampala Road, where Mapeera House and the Kampala Boulevard Building now stand, two buildings still bore holes blown through their walls by explosions during the 1979 war that ousted Idi Amin. Roads such as Nkrumah and Nasser were riddled with potholes; the 45km trip from Kampala to Lugazi could take three hours.
The wider economy was in poor shape. The industrial towns of Mbale and Jinja had gone quiet after factory closures, and coffee production, once a leading source of foreign exchange, had fallen sharply. The government that had taken power five years earlier was still working to restore peace and repair the economy, while conflict continued in the north. A banking crisis was building that would eventually bring down five indigenous financial institutions.
“We started to see international banks closing branches in major towns and concentrating in Kampala,” recalls Michael Wakabi, a journalist in his 20s at the time. “Some of these towns were former industrial towns that lost factories during Amin’s time and were now in bad shape.”
Uganda was also facing severe poverty and the early, devastating years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “People had lost hope, and saw no need of long-term planning,” Wakabi says. “My father worked at Kakira Sugar Works, and I would see company trucks taking home three or five bodies of workers who had died of HIV/AIDS. The rebels were active in the north and travelling there was dangerous.”
Entering through Grindlays
It was in the 1991/92 period that Standard Bank Group, trading in Uganda as Stanbic, acquired Grindlays Bank of East Africa and entered the market. “Unless you were a long-term thinker, you would not invest in Uganda at that time,” Wakabi says. “Many companies saw no future here.”
The bank frames the decision as consistent with its wider history on the continent, which stretches back more than 160 years. Estranelle Lubbe, head of heritage governance at Standard Bank Group, says the Group has repeatedly expanded into markets it judged to have long-term potential rather than guaranteed returns. “The institution saw a country rebuilding itself and believed it could contribute to that journey,” she says.
The UCB acquisition
Stanbic’s role changed sharply in 2002, when the government privatised Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB) — a reform that drew intense public debate and reshaped the banking sector. Until then, the bank had been a relatively niche institution built on the Grindlays legacy. Acquiring UCB gave it a far larger footprint almost overnight.
It was around this period, the bank says, that it adopted the purpose statement it still uses: “Uganda is Home. We Drive Her Growth.” Patrick Mweheire, who became Stanbic Bank Uganda’s first Ugandan chief executive before taking on wider Standard Bank Group responsibilities, says the phrase mattered for the obligations it implied. “If Uganda is truly your home, then your relationship with the country cannot be transactional,” he says. “The purpose challenged us to think beyond banking products.”
Business today
Thirty-five years on, Stanbic describes itself as one of Uganda’s leading financiers of productive sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, trade and energy. The bank says it has extended credit to women entrepreneurs, channelled unsecured, low-interest loans to savings organisations to reach rural customers outside the formal banking system, supported businesses formalising their operations, and run entrepreneurship and innovation training for young people.
Francis Karuhanga, regional chief executive for Central and Southern Africa at Standard Bank Group and a former chief executive of Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited, links the bank’s growth to the country’s. “The bank grew because Uganda was growing,” he says. “Every major phase in our evolution corresponded with a broader phase in the country’s economic progress.”
Leadership
Through its first decade, from 1991 to 2000, the bank was run by a succession of country chief executives from Standard Bank Group, including AB Myers, Dave Edgar, John Murray, John Miller and Anthony Klensmitch. Its first African chief executive, Kitili Mbathi, took over in 2001 and steered the UCB acquisition and merger. He was succeeded by Philip Odera (2007–2014), then Mweheire, the first Ugandan to lead the bank; Anne Juuko, its first female chief executive; Samuel Mwogeza, who served in the interim; and Mumba Kenneth Kalifungwa, appointed in 2025.
Kalifungwa casts the anniversary as a point of continuity rather than celebration. “Thirty-five years ago, our predecessors made a choice that required confidence in Uganda’s future,” he says. “Our responsibility is to continue earning the trust that has been built over three and a half decades.”
What’s next
The bank argues that Uganda now stands before a fresh set of shifts — industrialisation, energy development, regional integration and a growing population. Mark Ociiti Ongom, chief executive of Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited, says the milestone is worth marking mainly for what it says about the country. “The real story isn’t that a bank has been operating in Uganda for 35 years,” he says. “The real story is that Uganda has undergone one of the most remarkable transformations on the continent during that period.”
Standard Bank Group entered Uganda in 1991 having, as Wakabi puts it, bought into the government’s reconstruction plan. “The decision Standard Bank Group made to come to Uganda in 1991 showed that it was a long-term thinker,” he says. “And here we are.”