Seven Francophone mandates identified in four quarters, a firm leading the 100 Legal Powerlist for a fifth consecutive year, and almost no coverage in the Anglophone directories that shape how international clients choose counsel.
Key points
- Francophone sub-Saharan Africa recorded a record 17 deals in the last full KPMG reporting year.
- Asafo & Co. leads the Africa Business+ / Jeune Afrique 100 Legal Powerlist for the fifth consecutive year.
- Meridian has identified Francophone mandates in Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Mauritius in four quarters.
- Islamic finance in Francophone West Africa is the highest-value niche with no systematic coverage anywhere.
The market nobody in English reports
Francophone sub-Saharan Africa recorded a record 17 deals in the last full KPMG reporting year for the region, its fastest pace in two years. The same reporting noted heavy resource-driven activity across Southern Africa and record volumes in West Africa.
Meridian’s research, built from verified counsel appointments rather than deal databases, has identified seven Francophone mandates across four quarters:
| Transaction | Markets | Counsel | Sector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDG Invest Growth / Mediterrania acquisition of SNCE | Morocco | Asafo & Co. | Water infrastructure |
| Mediterrania acquisition of Amcor Flexibles Mohammedia | Morocco | Asafo & Co. | Industrials / packaging |
| COIC acquisition of majority stake in Uniwax from Vlisco | Côte d’Ivoire | Asafo & Co. | Consumer / textiles |
| Sale of OCS Group’s Moroccan and Senegalese operations | Morocco, Senegal | Asafo & Co. | Facility services |
| AfricInvest Small Cap investment in Spoon Consulting | Mauritius | Asafo & Co. | Technology / AI |
| Cash Plus IPO | Morocco | Asafo & Co. | Equity capital markets |
| Banque Islamique du Sénégal Murabaha facility | Senegal | Clifford Chance, International Lamane Partners, IFC | Islamic finance |
Seven mandates, four jurisdictions, one firm appearing six times. That last observation is the reason Meridian considers this a coverage problem rather than a market-size problem.
The structural reason Anglophone coverage fails here
Three mechanisms keep Francophone African work out of the English-language legal record.
1. Publication language. The 100 Legal Powerlist, published by Africa Business+ in partnership with Jeune Afrique, is the definitive annual ranking of the most active business lawyers in French-speaking Africa. It is a serious, credible product. It is also published in French, and it is therefore almost entirely absent from how Anglophone clients and directories describe the African market.
2. Market-entry path. A UK or US client entering Côte d’Ivoire usually does so through a Paris relationship, and the Paris firm’s correspondent network is not publicly documented. The visible institution is the intermediary, not the African firm doing the work.
3. Legal family. OHADA’s uniform acts are a genuinely different legal system with a genuinely different practice. A firm that does excellent Nigerian or Kenyan work is not thereby equipped for OHADA. Directories that rank by “Africa-wide” capability blur this, and clients get burned.
Why Asafo & Co. is the story and also the warning
Asafo & Co.’s position is genuinely dominant: first place on the 100 Legal Powerlist for the fifth consecutive year, a February 2026 merger with Stork Avocats to deepen French-law execution, a co-founder-level presence across Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mauritius and Kenya, and the range to run a two-continent OCS Group disposal and a Moroccan water-infrastructure acquisition in the same week.
That dominance is the market’s problem as much as the firm’s achievement. A market with one obvious incumbent and thin public information about everyone else is a market where clients pay above the efficient price for capability, and where genuinely excellent smaller firms, International Lamane Partners in Senegal, Thiam & Associés in Dakar, local Abidjan practices, are invisible.
Meridian’s West Africa 50 is designed to fix the West African portion of this by publishing verified firm capability data with named transactions. The response from Francophone firms has been the strongest we have received from any region.
The niche with genuinely no coverage anywhere
Islamic finance in Francophone West Africa. The Banque Islamique du Sénégal Murabaha facility, with IFC as counterparty and Clifford Chance and International Lamane Partners advising, is a perfect illustration. Islamic finance requires a distinct structuring discipline, Sharia-compliant asset flows, profit-sharing rather than interest, specific documentation, and it is growing in a region where almost no law firm markets that capability in English or French.
Meridian flags this as the highest-value unclaimed coverage niche in the African legal market. No directory reports it systematically. No firm has claimed it publicly. The institutions deploying the capital are real and growing.
What Meridian will publish
- A Francophone Africa section of the Transactions Tracker, published in English, with deal entries sourced from firm announcements and regional financial press.
- The West Africa 50 extended to OHADA-zone firms with verified transaction counts and cross-border reach, alongside the Anglophone West African firms already in progress.
- An OHADA explainer series for Anglophone in-house counsel, written to be useful rather than theoretical: what the uniform acts actually require of a foreign investor, and where practice diverges from the text.
- Islamic finance coverage in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria as a standing beat.
Related on Meridian
- The London corridor: African firms are hiring English-law capacity instead of renting it
- Egypt’s privatisation pipeline is a two-year legal mandate queue, and it is already staffed
- Cash Plus IPO on the Casablanca Stock Exchange
- Sale of OCS Group’s Moroccan and Senegalese operations
- Compagnie ivoirienne de coton takes control of Uniwax from Vlisco
- The Meridian West Africa 50
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