Kenyan venture capital company East Africa Capital Partners Ltd is to begin raising its second fund next year, with a target size of USD250 million, after its success in fully investing $100 million of the first African Technology, Media and Telecommunications (ATMT) fund. The new fund is to focus on information technology, media and real estate.
Liquidity is up, while the number of days for settlement and cases of fraud are down in bond trading as fixed-income traders and investors flock to the Automated Trading System (ATS) of the Nairobi Stock Exchange. According to report in Kenya’s Business Daily, citing data provided by NSE, the value of bonds traded by the end of May was KSh 177.5 billion ($2.2 billion), up 60% on the KSh 110.6 billion traded in the same period in 2009.
Adlevo Capital Managers (www.adlevocapital.com) announced on 10 June that it has completed the first closing of Adlevo Capital Africa LLC fund with capital commitments of US$52 million. The fund will make expansion capital investments into companies with technology-enabled business models across sub-Saharan Africa.
Interest in African sovereign debt has been climbing again in recent months. Angola plans to issue a $1 billion – $2 billion benchmark bond., Kenya, Nigeria and Mauritius and many other countries have flourishing debt markets and international interest is good in high-yielding hard-currency bonds such as those issued by the Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire.
Fears of the potential impact of IT disruption on African capital markets, combined with a long-running initiative to pool fragmented markets for more liquidity, led to a shock decision by the African markets association today to switch to a single African market platform at short notice.
Sunil Benimadhu, Chief Executive Officer of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius: We have had lots of discussion on how to link different markets. Lots of …
Kenya’s biggest mobile telecommunications company says it will continue to lead the market through its revolutionary mobile payment system M-PESA – already the world’s most successful with 9 million users – and through moving fast into data. Safaricom (www.safaricom.co.ke) has 78% market share (83% by revenue) and 15.2 million customers, according to Les Baillie, Chief Investor Relations Officer, and it will be hard for its competitors to catch up.
According to Zimbabwe’s Herald newspaper (www.herald.co.zw), it is only months before the introduction of a hub-and-spoke interconnectivity model for SADC stock exchanges as “the first significant step towards the integration of one of Africa’s economic regions”.
Telecoms have attracted some of Africa’s biggest and most lucrative equity deals and the 14 Feb sale of $10.7 billion of telecom assets further indicates the rising power from the East, this time India.
Financial information company McGregor BFA is offering investors new products, Realtime, which will stream data from South Africa’s JSE Limited securities exchange at lower cost
South African investors can trade two of the best-known IT names through the listing of single stock futures (SSFs) on Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) and Google (www.google.com) on the JSE Limited (www.jse.co.za) on 11 December.
The African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) is set to discuss “Global Crisis: Opportunities for African Capital Markets” within 2 weeks. The 13th ASEA conference will be hosted by the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) from 2-5 December 2009.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange is seeking some US$33 million in capital for its fifth software upgrade and also to help finance the Sierra Leone stock exchange.
The International Finance Corporation (www.ifc.org), a member of the World Bank Group, is investing $100 million into bringing the benefits of better telecommunications to many Nigerians via Helios Towers Nigeria Ltd.
The Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) has readvertised its request for IT vendors to express their interest in providing a Broker Back Office (BBO) system to handle administration and client accounts for its 18 active and licensed stockbroking members. The closing date is 27 October.
Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) announced on 22 September it has committed $25 million to Wananchi Group Holdings
US$8 billion was invested in developing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Africa in 2008, according to the Secretary-General of International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
Copyright 2021 Ⓒ African Capital Markets
Web Design by Brilliant Digital