PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the world’s leading professional services firms, has ceased operations in nine Sub-Saharan African countries, in what it describes as the outcome of a “strategic review.”

The affected countries include Ivory Coast, Gabon, Cameroon, Madagascar, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Republic of Guinea, and Equatorial Guinea. The announcement was published on PwC’s website on 31st March.

The firm made the disclosure in response to media queries following a report by the Financial Times (FT), which suggested that the closures were part of a broader exit from over a dozen markets considered by the company to be “too small, risky or unprofitable.”

Though PwC’s official statement did not provide specific reasons for the withdrawal, the FT report indicated that tensions had emerged between the global leadership and local partners. According to the report, the local firms claimed they had “lost over a third of their business in recent years after pressure from PwC's global executives to drop risky clients.”

The development marks another turbulent episode for the accounting giant, which has been rocked by reputational and regulatory challenges in several jurisdictions. Last year, its China division was fined $62 million and suspended for six months due to audit failures linked to China Evergrande’s $78 billion fraud case. Similarly, the UK regulatory authority slapped PwC with a fine of around $6 million in March over its audit of Wyelands Bank for the 2019 financial year.

Further afield, the firm has been working to restore its relationship with Saudi Arabia after the kingdom’s $925 billion sovereign wealth fund halted engagements with PwC. Meanwhile, according to the FT report, the company has also severed ties with member firms in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and even the Pacific nation of Fiji.

The restructuring has coincided with a wave of client departures and job cuts across several PwC offices globally.

Despite these developments, the firm has not publicly confirmed any intention to scale back its footprint in West Africa's larger economies such as Nigeria or Ghana, where it continues to maintain operations.