African businesses could face significant costs due to high turnover among field agents, with potential losses of up to N72 million for every 100 agents, according to the 2026 African Sales Intelligence Report by Laddar Africa.
The report identifies agent attrition as a major challenge for businesses that rely on field teams to acquire customers, distribute products, and operate across multiple territories.
Replacing a field agent costs between 0.5x and 2x their annual salary after accounting for recruitment, training, and lost productivity, according to Laddar Africa.
For a team of 100 agents with 44% annual turnover, this represents a recurring cost of N18 million to N72 million.
Field-agent turnover in Nigeria and Kenya averages 44% annually, while it exceeds 60% in some telecommunications and FMCG territories.
The cost of attrition goes beyond recruiting and training replacement workers because departing agents can also take customer relationships, route knowledge, and contact data that were never formally captured by their employers.
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This creates an additional risk for companies whose customer information is stored on individual agents’ phones rather than within company systems.
Each departing agent takes with them customer relationships, route knowledge, and contact data that was never formally recorded.
Laddar estimates that more than 4.2 million field agents are active across sub-Saharan Africa, while 71% of companies surveyed plan to expand their field teams over the next 12 months.
Nigeria’s agent-based business ecosystem has expanded rapidly, particularly through the growth of Point-of-Sale (PoS) operations.
In 2024, the number of deployed PoS terminals more than doubled to 5.5 million, up 129% from 2.4 million at the end of 2023, while registered terminals increased to 7.8 million.
By March 2025, Nigeria had 8.3 million registered PoS terminals, with 5.9 million deployed, while industry representatives put the number of PoS agents at more than 1.9 million nationwide.
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The rapid expansion has also brought tighter regulatory scrutiny, with the Central Bank of Nigeria directing financial institutions to submit detailed monthly reports on their PoS agents, including transaction activity, fraud incidents, customer complaints, and other agent-level information.
The regulator subsequently introduced new agent-banking rules that took effect from April 1, 2026, including a requirement for agents to operate exclusively with a single financial institution or super-agent, alongside stricter requirements around agent locations and devices.
Customer data is becoming increasingly important to Nigeria’s agent ecosystem, drawing greater regulatory scrutiny, as seen in the data protection laws.
In July 2026, the Federal High Court upheld the Nigeria Data Protection Commission’s authority to require PoS agents to register as Data Controllers and Processors of Major Importance (DCPMIs) under the Nigeria Data Protection Act.
The court held that the registration framework was consistent with the objectives of the data-protection law and would allow the regulator to identify organisations involved in significant data processing and monitor their compliance.
They are now subject to stricter regulations.