The story
CFAO was founded in 1852 to trade in West African commodities such as groundnuts, cocoa, rubber and soap, with posts in what are now Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Between 1887 and 1912 its turnover grew and the number of trading posts grew from 46 to 151, extending beyond Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Sierra Leone into Sudan, Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, Dahomey and Nigeria.
The business ventured into the motor vehicles market in 1913 when it started selling the Ford Model T in Senegal. Its motor business grew in the 1960s through relationships with Japanese manufacturers, among them Toyota, Isuzu and Subaru;. During this period it also moved into manufacturing, including plastics factories producing Bic pens and razors for West Africa and into local brewing and it expanded its vehicle distribution in East Africa and the French overseas territories.
In 1990 the Pinault group acquired CFAO. In 1996 CFAO bought its long-standing competitor SCOA, which brought in the pharmaceutical distributor Eurapharma, a leading wholesaler in West Africa. A technology division, CFAO Technologies, was created in 2002. CFAO was listed on Euronext Paris in December 2009.
In 2012 Toyota Tsusho made a public tender offer for CFAO as Pinault's successor company (Kering) was withdrawing from retail and distribution and ended up with around 97–98% of the capital. CFAO was delisted from the Paris exchange in 2016, and in March 2017 it became the vehicle for Toyota Tsusho's African operations, which added Toyota Tsusho's businesses in East and Southern Africa to the group.
Notable developments since 2015 include:
2015: A retail joint venture with Carrefour was announced and the first PlaYce shopping centre opened in Abidjan in December of that year.
2017: CFAO acquired a 51% stake in the Moroccan drug maker Maphar.
2019: It bought a 74.9% stake in Unitrans Motors, the motor-retail arm of Steinhoff, giving it a network of dealerships in South Africa.
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2022: CFAO Healthcare took a minority stake of about 30% in the Kenyan pharmacy chain Goodlife Pharmacy. The PlaYce shopping centre in Yaoundé, Cameroon, also opened that year.
2024: CFAO and Eurus Energy formed Aeolus, a joint venture to invest in renewable energy in Africa. In October CFAO Healthcare agreed to acquire Sanofi's consumer healthcare business in South Africa.
2025: In July, CFAO Healthcare announced it had acquired 100% of Goodlife Pharmacy from the impact investor LeapFrog Investments; the chain then had nearly 150 outlets in Kenya and Uganda. In December, CFAO Mobility took over the distribution of Toyota and Hino vehicles in Ghana.
2026: CFAO Healthcare announced further acquisitions in Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean, including Medswana in Botswana (July) and OPHAM in Madagascar (September).
From Wikipedia’s article on CFAO Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5