Africa's Stock Markets: Growth, Challenges, and Path Ahead

“The trajectory is good. I think we've got like 20 plus now African stock exchanges. The fact that you have mostly institutional investors, so you don’t have necessarily a huge, I’ll say, individual stock market picking for African stock structure on the continent. So we would like to see more of that,” he says.

“The launching of a stock market in Ethiopia was and is aligned with the prime minister's aim to open up the Ethiopian markets more broadly and bring in the private sector. He’s also, a few years ago, brought in telecommunications. So I think that signals to non-Ethiopians that Ethiopia is increasingly open for business. And that’s a very positive thing because it’s the second-largest country on the continent in terms of population,” Sudarkasa explains.

“The conversation is useful and critical. And I think it’s one that will only continue to grow as regional integration happens. If you look recently, Nigeria [partner] and Egypt became part of BRICS. So you have South Africa, and you also have Ethiopia. So you have four of the top five countries in terms of GDP size. If that group just said, ‘We want to be able to have shared access in any kind of trading platform,’ that would be huge for the continent,” the chairman adds.

“If you are a country with significant petrochemical assets, if you were looking to get ESG-supported funding, you probably will get less of that. But again, you’ve got a significant portion of your population who doesn't have access to electricity or companies that don’t have adequate access to energy. Prioritizing getting them that electricity or energy through your natural resources, to me, should be the greater priority than appeasing all the global foreign investors who may or may not disagree with you,” he stresses.