Standard Chartered Plc will open 13 new branches in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Zambia this year as the British bank taps growth opportunities across Africa, the head of its business on the continent said.

“We are extremely bullish about Africa,” Diana Layfield, the London-based bank’s chief executive officer for Africa, said in an interview Wednesday at the African Development Bank’s annual meeting in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital.

Layfield reiterated Standard Chartered’s goal of doubling the size of its African business in the five years from 2013 as it vies with foreign banks from Barclays Plc and Citigroup Inc to UBS AG for a share of the deals and wealth being generated on the continent.

Standard Chartered opened 35 branches last year across the 15 sub-Saharan African countries where it has a presence and would also like to enter Ethiopia, she said.

“It’s up to the Ethiopians to decide when and how they want an international presence in their banking market,” Layfield said. “I’m planning a series of visits later in the year to talk to them and try and understand how they might see our presence in Ethiopia.”

READ: Ethiopia is open for investment but not everyone is welcome

Ethiopia has had an average annual real economic growth rate of 10.9 per cent over the past decade, according to the AfDB.

South Africa’s Standard Bank Group plans to open a representative office in Ethiopia, while Togo-based Ecobank Transnational Inc has also expressed interest in the country.

The recent attacks by Islamist militants in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, and Kenya haven’t affected Standard Chartered’s view on the opportunities in these countries.

“Our belief in the medium-term and long-term prospects of those economies isn’t diminished by that,” Layfield said. “We still remain incredibly focused on growing our presence in both Nigeria and Kenya.”

While Standard Chartered said on May 8 that first-quarter operating profit declined amid weakness in emerging-market currencies and its financial-markets business, the bank isn’t planning any staff cuts in Africa, Layfield said.

“We see opportunity in Africa and our focus is on growth rather than on shrinking,” she said. “Where people sit in the business may move around, but I’m not expecting redundancies across Africa.”