More than 300 policymakers, regulators, institutional investors, development finance leaders and market practitioners from over 20 African countries are gathering in Nairobi this week for the third Sustainable Capital Markets Conference, organised by FSD Africa and partners. The conference comes at a pivotal moment as African countries seek to mobilise domestic capital to finance development priorities, with overseas funding drying up, slowing foreign investment and mounting fiscal pressures. The shift of focus to domestic capital markets is also informed by low market activity, with fewer than half of African countries having seen a domestic firm issue a corporate bond since 2000. Whereas the continent’s domestic equity markets have grown 27-fold since 2000 to USD 561 billion, its share of global capital market activity has declined, indicating that its growth is not keeping pace internationally. With African institutional investors now managing an estimated US$4 trillion across pension funds, insurance companies, banks and sovereign wealth funds, discussions will focus on how to channel greater volumes of domestic capital into productive sectors that support economic growth, resilience and job creation. Despite significant financing needs, only 2.7% of institutional assets are currently invested in infrastructure and other productive sectors across the continent. The conferen...
This page contains an attributed headline and the preview text supplied through the publisher’s RSS feed. Copyright in the original reporting belongs to KBC.
