Despite volatile currency movements and struggling commodity prices across the continent, Standard Bank is sticking to the theme that Africa is its home and it is driving growth there, group CEO Sim Tshabalala said this week. The group's African operations delivered a mixed performance in the six months to June.The contribution from its East African operations to its "rest of Africa" earnings rose 43% to R617-million in the six months to June - but West African operations declined 23% as the business was hit by bad debts.For Tshabalala, these dips are part of the business cycle."We entered Nigeria in the early '90s and we've gone through many business cycles, but we've never left or pulled back," he said."We're going to stick it out there."Notwithstanding currency and oil price fluctuations, Tshabalala said, the bank was committed to West Africa for the long term and would see the current volatility through.story_article_left1He said the region's large population, middle-class customer base and diversified economies indicated lots of opportunities for growth.At Standard Bank's personal and business banking unit in the rest of the continent, headline earnings tripled to R158-million from R53-million in the first half of 2015.Adrian Cloete, a portfolio manager at PSG, said: "This is a good example that their strategy in Africa is paying off, as two years ago personal and business banking in the rest of Africa was just breaking even."After the financial crisis, the banking group implemented heavy cost-cutting measures, among them pulling the plug on several sponsorship deals as well as retrenching staff.In 2010 the group retrenched about 1145 permanent staff and 600 contract or nonpermanent staff."What was happening was you had a cost base growing a lot faster than revenues and we had to reverse that trend."The retrenchments were carried alongside cutting sponsorships," said Tshabalala.Standard Bank has returned to the sports sponsorship arena, however, announcing a four-year Proteas sponsorship deal with Cricket South Africa in May this year.The financial crisis also had an impact on the group's operations outside Africa.The group reduced its exposure in Russia, Turkey and Brazil.In Argentina it sold a majority of its stake in BankBoston to ICBC, retaining a 20% minority.Tshabalala said it pulled out of those markets because the cost base necessary to support those businesses was high but the revenues generated were not sufficient to keep them afloat.To retain access to foreign markets, Tshabalala said, the group established strategic partnerships in key markets abroad."We retained our representation in a number of jurisdictions that would give us access to capital markets and to multinationals and corporations that have an interest in making investments or trading in and with the African continent."story_article_right2The group has partnered with stakeholders in the US, UK, Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.Tshabalala said these partnerships were necessary to establish relations in capital markets in those areas, connecting them to corporations, parastatals and governments with an interest in doing business with companies in Africa.Standard Bank is also investing in digital platforms through mobile and cellphone banking to compete in the digital space effectively.Cloete said this was crucial as financial inclusion grows and more young people enter the job market, creating more room for financial institutions to gain new customers.But, Cloete said, banks still had to have a "compelling offering to clients and provide excellent service to gain market share".Tshabalala said the bank had been putting a lot of work into its front- and back-end systems to enable it to remain customer-centric while keeping costs competitive.The group's share price opened at R146.10 on Thursday and closed at R153.42.tsamelad@sundaytimes.co.za..