The African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) and the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) have signed an agreement to provide a grant of $600,000 for the expansion of the African Exchanges Linkage Project (AELP).
The grant comes from the Korea African Economic Cooperation Fund (KOAFEC) Trust Fund, managed by the African Development Bank.
This collaboration among AELP and ASEA is an effort to promote cross-border securities trading, increase liquidity and diversity of investment opportunities for investors.
The Project’s second phase will give investors access to more than 2000 securities listed in as many as 15 capital markets, through a cross-border securities trading platform, tailor-made for regulators, central depositories, policymakers and stockbrokers.
Participating stock exchanges include the Botswana Stock Exchange, Ghana Stock Exchange among others.
The grant will also be used for capacity building of institutional investors and capital market operators.
Thapelo Tsheole, the President of ASEA and CEO of the Botswana Stock Exchange, who signed the grant agreement on behalf of the association expressed his gratitude to the African Development Bank for their support towards the African capital markets.
Meanwhile, Solomon Quaynor, the Bank Group’s vice president for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation signed the grant on its behalf.
“The bank is pleased to extend its partnership with ASEA through the follow-on support for phase two of the African Exchanges Linkage Project. The AELP is facilitating regional integration through African stock exchanges linkage amounting to up to $1.3 trillion in combined market capitalisation.” Quaynor said.
According to him, the collaboration between the AELP and ASEA aligns with the Bank Group’s objective of incentivizing institutional investors and capital markets financing into African infrastructures and into the real sector in regional member countries.
The objectives of AELP also echos with the initiatives of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Agreement which focus on a liberalized market to facilitate the movement of capital and investments to deepen the entire continent’s economic integration.
The African Development Bank had previously supported the first phase of the AELP which resulted in the connection of seven exchanges and 31 stockbrokers, as well as the training of over 1000 capital market operators.