Story: Boahene Asamoah
THE Chairman of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Mr Frank Adu Jnr, has challenged stock exchanges across Africa to integrate and automate their trading platforms to attract the much needed foreign investments into the continent.
He said without integration and automation of stock exchanges in Africa, the continent would be limiting her ability to reach out to foreign capital.
“Unless we make significant changes in our stock markets, we cannot make progress as the next investment frontier,” he said in Accra yesterday at the opening of a three-day international conference of the African Securities Exchange Association (ASEA).
The 11th ASEA conference is being hosted by the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) on the theme: The African Capital Market: The Next Investment Frontier.
It attracted many stakeholders on the African capital market.
Mr Adu, who is also the Managing Director of CAL Bank, underscored the importance of regional integration of stock markets to the development of the continent and called for innovative ideas to enable stock exchanges on the continent to facilitate the much needed economic development in Africa.
He, however, acknowledged that emerging markets did not have to re-invent the wheel or resist innovation, but to symbolise it, without which stock exchanges could not grow.
Mr Adu questioned why it was not possible in the near future for governments to use the African Stock markets as vehicles to reach out to the international financial markets.
He said this in reference to the government of Ghana’s sourcing of $750 million through eurobond from the international markets.
“It should be possible for the government to source funds in its next foray unto the financial market from the African capital markets.”
Touching on regulation of stock exchanges, Mr Adu called for rules and regulations enacted not only to be compatible, but also conform to international standards.
The President of ASEA, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of the Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchanges in Egypt, Mr Maged Shawky Sourial, said the 20-member association accounted for $1.5 trillion capitalisation last year.
He said “the market can do a lot for the continent and has a pivotal role to play in the economic development of the African continent.”
Mr Sourial called for the sharing of knowledge and experiences that would make the African stock markets strong and impact on the continent’s development.
ASEA was established in 1993 with the principal objective of creating a mutual platform for assistance and co-operation among African capital markets in areas of technology, corporate governance, economic growth and general market development.
This year’s conference, which is to be hosted for the first time in Ghana, aims at focusing on important issues affecting African capital markets and how various countries’ experiences could be harnessed to assist in accelerating economic growth.
Apart from the Cairo and Johannesburg stock exchanges, which are more than 100 years, most of the African markets are less than 50 years, and the number of listings are nothing to write home about. The liquidity of these stock exchanges are equally poor.
The conference will, therefore, provide opportunities for delegates to make new contacts and exchange new ideas, while providing and enabling environment for business opportunities.
Major topics lined up for the conference include Globalisation and African Capital Markets; Key Drivers for Development of African Capital Markets; African Capital Markets – The Next Decade. Within these broad thematic topics, issues such as recent developments in African capital markets, performance of African capital markets, cross- border investment and securitisation in financial markets development will be discussed.
Other issues that will be tackled at the conference include sovereign participation in international debt markets — The Ghana case.
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