Trading On Technology

African capital markets are increasingly adopting disruption to make investing more transparent and accessible to a younger, tech-savvy generation, and thus see an increase in trading volumes.

- Tom Jackson

Oscar Onyema was appointed the new CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in 2011, having previously been senior vice president of the American Stock Exchange. The exchange needed to change to increase transparency and make investing easier, and for this, Onyema turned to technology.

The NSE’s X-GEN trading platform was launched in 2013, offering better access to real time data, thereby improving governance and transparency. Onyema described it as the fastest trading platform in Africa.

Its impact was immediate. The average daily value of trade increased by around a third, to over $14 million in 2017.

Other capital markets across the continent are following suit and adopting tech to make investing more transparent and accessible. The Nairobi Securities Exchange, for example, rolled out its Automated Trading System in 2014.

The Nairobi exchange followed this up with the launch of its own mobile app, which its head of brand and corporate affairs Waithera Mwai-Ireri says would “democratize” access to capital market related information in Kenya. The app provides quick and easy information for potential investors and allows investments to be made in real-time.

Mwai-Ireri says the move was designed to make investing on capital markets accessible to a younger, tech-savvy generation.