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Due Diligence in Sub-Saharan Africa

 

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to several of the world's fastest-growing economies. The region is rich in critical minerals and energy resources that will underpin the next phase of the global energy transition, as well as agricultural land of growing strategic importance. It is also a region in which major commercial opportunities frequently coexist with material governance and integrity risks.

In its 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published in February 2026, Transparency International gave sub-Saharan Africa an average score of just 32 out of 100, the lowest of any region in the world. Only four of the region's 49 countries scored above 50. For any company entering a joint venture, acquisition, distribution agreement, financing arrangement or supply-chain relationship across the region, rigorous integrity due diligence is not a formality but a practical precondition for informed decision-making.

This page deals with sub-Saharan Africa. For the purposes of our regional coverage pages, we address Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan and Chad alongside North Africa on our Middle East and North Africa page.

Challenges of investigative due diligence in sub-Saharan Africa

The central difficulty is the uneven and often limited availability of reliable public information. Some jurisdictions have moved corporate filings online and made them genuinely searchable. In others, the registry remains paper-based, locally held, expensive to access or effectively closed to outside enquiry. Beneficial ownership can be obscured behind holding structures, nominee arrangements and politically connected intermediaries, while official information on directors and shareholders may be incomplete or unavailable.

Two further features sharpen the challenge. First, a large share of economic activity takes place in the informal sector and through mobile-money platforms. This can leave a thinner publicly accessible documentary trail than investigators may encounter in more transparent jurisdictions. Second, the research has to be conducted in the relevant language. Working directly in English and French across many of the jurisdictions we cover - and in Spanish in Equatorial Guinea - allows us to access regional reporting, court coverage, corporate records and investigative journalism that rarely surface in an English-only search.

Depending on the jurisdiction and the nature of the assignment, additional local-language research may also be required. Where necessary, we supplement our in-house capabilities with trusted local associates and specialist researchers.

Corporate records across common-law and OHADA jurisdictions

Company records across sub-Saharan Africa are shaped by a range of legal traditions, including common-law systems, civil-law systems and mixed jurisdictions. These differences determine where information sits, how it can be obtained and how much confidence can be placed in the available records.

The anglophone states - among them Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa - broadly follow common-law models. Company registries are increasingly digitised in a number of these jurisdictions and, in the stronger cases, can be searched by company and sometimes by director. The availability, completeness and cost of the underlying filings still vary significantly.

Much of francophone West and Central Africa falls within the OHADA zone (Organisation pour l'Harmonisation en Afrique du Droit des Affaires), a harmonised system of business law shared by 17 member states. Under the OHADA framework, companies are entered in a standardised trade register, the Registre du Commerce et du Crédit Mobilier (RCCM), while relevant disputes can ultimately reach the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration (CCJA) in Abidjan.

For an investigator, the practical advantage of OHADA is consistency: the categories of information and the registration logic are broadly comparable from Senegal to Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Harmonisation does not, however, mean uniform accessibility. A company may be registered under a common legal framework while the practical availability, completeness and retrievability of its filings still depend heavily on the local jurisdiction. Local retrieval capability and independent corroboration therefore remain important. The OHADA zone also includes Equatorial Guinea, the region's one mainly Spanish-speaking jurisdiction.

Sub-Saharan Africa expertise

At Maddocks Insight, we combine multilingual research capabilities with the political and economic expertise needed to conduct investigative due diligence across English- and French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea. Our coverage includes:

Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mauritius, Seychelles, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and Equatorial Guinea.

For multi-jurisdictional assignments and projects requiring additional local expertise, we draw on our wider network of associates as appropriate.

What we examine in a sub-Saharan Africa due diligence investigation

The scope of an investigation depends on the jurisdiction, the transaction and the subject's risk profile. Our research can include:

• Corporate registration details and official filings - confirming the subject's legal existence, registration history, directors, shareholders and available filing records.
• Ownership and control - identifying ultimate beneficial owners, holding structures, nominee arrangements and other indicators of undisclosed influence.
• Political exposure - mapping links to current or former public officials, state-owned enterprises, politically exposed persons (PEPs) and influential intermediaries.
• Sanctions and watchlist screening - checking subjects, directors, shareholders and beneficial owners against applicable sanctions lists and other relevant databases.
• Litigation, regulatory and insolvency checks - reviewing court records, regulatory findings, procurement records and insolvency information where these are accessible.
• Adverse media and reputational research - examining credible local, regional and international reporting, including investigative journalism and civil-society sources.
• Source corroboration - testing material findings against multiple sources where official records or mainstream reporting are limited.
• Dispute-related research - conducting litigation support and asset-tracing research where a transaction or commercial relationship has already gone wrong.

Specific features of due diligence research in sub-Saharan Africa

• Wide variation in transparency - perceived levels of public-sector corruption differ considerably across the region. In Transparency International's CPI 2025, Seychelles (68) was the region's highest scorer, followed by Cabo Verde (62), Botswana (58) and Rwanda (58). At the other end of the scale, Somalia and South Sudan both scored 9. The research strategy must be tailored to the realities of the specific jurisdiction rather than to "Africa" as a whole.
• Politically exposed persons and the extractives sector - in many economies, some of the most valuable opportunities sit in mining, oil, gas and infrastructure, precisely the sectors where state involvement, licensing decisions and political connections can be densest. Links between a subject and current or former officials need to be mapped carefully and reviewed as part of an ongoing political-risk assessment.
• Other sectors with elevated exposure - similar issues can arise in public procurement, logistics, telecoms, financial services, commodities trading and agricultural supply chains, particularly where licences, concessions or state contracts are material to the business model.
• Sanctions exposure and conflict risk - subjects, directors, shareholders and ultimate beneficial owners should be screened against applicable sanctions lists. This is particularly important in jurisdictions affected by conflict, political instability or abrupt changes of government, including parts of the Sahel, where a counterparty's sanctions, political-exposure or operational-risk profile can change rapidly.
• Anti-bribery and anti-money-laundering risk - companies need to guard against bribery, facilitation payments and money-laundering schemes that could create exposure under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act or equivalent legislation.
• Alternative and corroborative sources - where official records and mainstream local reporting are thin, investigative-journalism outlets, civil-society organisations, court filings and carefully assessed social-media sources can help identify red flags. Such findings should be corroborated wherever possible.

Doing business in sub-Saharan Africa requires careful, locally-informed and multilingual due diligence. By investigating thoroughly, working in the relevant language and adapting the research strategy to the jurisdiction, businesses can make better-informed decisions, reduce their exposure to corruption and reputational risk, and pursue the region's considerable opportunities with greater confidence.

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of several regions we cover. We also conduct due diligence investigations in the Middle East and North Africa, China, Latin America and Europe. You can see our full geographic coverage on our Regions page and an overview of what we do on our Services page.

If you have due diligence research needs in sub-Saharan Africa, please contact us to discuss your specific requirements in confidence.