New WOCCU data shows Kenyan cooperatives hold nearly half the continent’s assets, even though they don’t have the most members
Africa’s credit union movement closed the latest reporting period holding a combined $19.6 billion in assets across 25,609 institutions and nearly 59 million members. Almost half of that wealth sits in Kenya.
According to the 2025 Statistical Report published by the World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU), Kenyan savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) held $8.34 billion in assets — more than four times the total of Senegal, the continent’s second-largest movement, and greater than the combined assets of every other African country in the report.
Kenya’s scale is not confined to assets. Across every core financial metric WOCCU tracks, the country’s 352 credit unions outperform the rest of the continent by wide margins:
- Savings and shares: $5.81 billion, roughly 44 percent of Africa’s $13.3 billion total.
- Loans outstanding: $6.55 billion, nearly half of the continent’s $13.66 billion in credit union lending.
- Institutional capital and reserves: $1.05 billion, close to 69 percent of the $1.52 billion held across all reporting African countries.
Institutional capital is the buffer cooperatives hold against losses, and Kenya’s SACCOs carry a share of it wildly out of proportion to their size — evidence, industry observers say, of a movement that has matured well beyond its regional peers in governance and financial discipline.
By comparison, the next-largest asset holders, Senegal ($1.74 billion) and Ivory Coast ($1.70 billion), remain in an entirely different tier. Only five African countries in the WOCCU dataset cross the $1 billion mark in total assets, and Kenya alone accounts for well over half of that group’s combined holdings.
The membership paradox
Yet Kenya does not top the continent on the metric that might seem the most intuitive measure of size: total membership.
Rwanda’s 342 financial cooperatives serve 14.81 million members, while Ethiopia’s 18,254 credit unions serve 7.95 million. On assets, however, the picture reverses: Rwanda’s SACCOs hold $390 million, compared with Ethiopia’s $599.9 million.
The gap illustrates a broader truth in Africa’s cooperative finance sector: a large membership base does not, on its own, translate into financial depth.
Zambia (2,001 credit unions) and Uganda (1,398) rank first and second on the continent by sheer number of institutions, yet both trail well behind Kenya, Senegal and Ivory Coast on assets — a sign of extensive but thinly capitalized networks rather than deep financial institutions.
