THE continent’s stock exchanges are a hard sell to African companies. Of more than 1.5-million businesses registered in Africa, only 1,600 are listed on the stock exchanges of the 23 states that make up the African Securities Exchanges Association (Asea), WRITES DIANNA GAMES.

At last week’s Asea conference in Johannesburg, delegates took a hard look at what Africa’s exchanges need to do differently to boost performance and relevance to attract investors and build assets.

Asea president and head of the Nigerian Stock Exchange Oscar Onyema suggested that new ways of engaging business leaders were needed, not just to talk about the benefits offered by Africa’s bourses, but for economies more broadly.

Poor corporate governance, he said, was responsible for most company failures in Africa.

The challenges of building up an asset base on a continent in which only about 2% of assets are traded are considerable. The weakness of the many stock exchanges across the continent is that most remain illiquid with little trade and few listed companies — and yet more and more countries want one. But many companies in Africa just don’t see the benefits of stock exchanges. There are multiple reasons for this. Read more ... 

- Published in Business Day SA, 23 November 2015