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Improving Africa's debt market

Senegal

Access to accurate information and data on African debt markets remains one of the major challenges facing investors.

Africa’s debt markets could be further developed by strengthening the domestic bond market and by investing in local currency-denominated debt to improve capital markets long-term resilience.

At the just concluded African Financial Markets Initiative workshop (AFMI) in Dakar, stakeholders addressed the challenges of the financial markets sector in Africa and brainstormed on how to evolve it.

“Today no one can say that I do not want to invest in Africa because they do not have data, we all know that investors need data before entering a market, this problem is solved AFMI which is also working on capacity building, through events such as this one is working on the implementation and popularization of concepts that are related to the financial market,” said Adien Diouf, General Manager, UMOA.

To further develop the local currency bond markets, some experts suggest that the yield period be prolonged so that African states can issue bonds over 10 or even 20 years.
One of the primary objectives of the initiative is to improve the availability and transparency of African fixed income data

“Currently the States support AFMI, they have appointed agents who are focal points with whom we work, we must remember that in 2000 the total bond issued on the African market was 28 billion, more than 200 billion bonds were issued in 2016 and the year outstanding at more than 300 billion, it shows that more and more local markets are used by the States,“said Cedric Mbeng AFMI coordinator.

Since its inception in 2008 , eight countries( which includes Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria) have been a part of the initiative. They represent 85% of the African domestic bond market above one year in maturity.

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