Lesaka Technologies has tasked merchant division head Kagiso Khaole to lead its push across Africa through acquisitions or relevant partnerships, as the JSE and Nasdaq-listed company keeps hunting for more businesses to absorb and reorganize under one operating structure.
Who Holds the Levers
CEO Lincoln Mali said the company’s strategy is built around expansion on the African continent, with the group still looking for acquisitions that will extend its reach outside South Africa. The company’s R1.6bn purchase of financial technology operator Adumo in 2024 gave it a foothold in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Kenya, and now the bosses want more.
Khaole, who previously led the Africa expansion for Elon Musk’s Starlink and is a former GM for Sub-Saharan Africa at Uber, has been put in charge of that international push. Mali said the group wants to use part of its war chest for deals in other African countries. The language is polished. The machinery is simple. Buy, absorb, standardize.
Mali said bolt-on acquisitions sit second on the priority list, but only if they meet the company’s criteria and pass the hurdles that its capital committee wants them to go through. That committee sits inside the apparatus, deciding which businesses get swallowed and which don’t. Third on the list is building and cementing a culture for Lesaka as part of the broader work to integrate the various businesses bought in recent years under one operating structure.
What the Workers Are Told
Mali framed the integration project in the language of harmony, saying, "It’s easy to build and buy the businesses, but to make them work like an orchestra needs the conductor to understand that they are not the one playing the music," Mali said.
He also asked, "How do we make our staff in one province able to do their jobs but within the context of One Lesaka? How do we make people working in one of our buildings in Cape Town, and in another in Joburg, all live with our new values?"
That piece, he said, remains "a very important part," because the company can buy businesses and still fail to get the synergies or collaboration if the organisations keep operating as they were separately. Mali said, "That’s a big focus that I’m driving."
The quote says plenty. The workers are expected to live with new values, while the company’s top layer decides how the merged machine should move. The people doing the jobs don’t get to set the terms; they get the culture memo after the purchase.
What Gets Kept, What Gets Cut
On the international portfolio, Mali said Lesaka is refining its strategy around which businesses to keep and grow. "There are some businesses in the old Adumo stable that we’re sunsetting, particularly in those areas where it’s just single product businesses," he said.
He said the company is holding onto merchants that do more with Lesaka, those that are "sticky with us," and not customers that are single, acquiring, and nothing else. The company says it is trying to create scale in acquiring and software, and Mali said it has already sunsetted businesses like ATM because it wants to focus on the things that will be critical going forward.
That’s the hierarchy in plain sight. The firm expands where it sees profit, trims what it calls nonessential, and folds the rest into a structure designed at the top. The 2024 Adumo purchase gave Lesaka a foothold beyond South Africa, and now the company is using that foothold to reach further into the continent through more deals and more control.
Lesaka has also made a number of notable acquisitions locally, including Connect Group, Recharger and the still to be finalised takeover of Bank Zero. Each one adds another piece to the same project: consolidation under one roof, with the roof owned by the company and the people below expected to make it all work like an orchestra.