SecondSTAX partners with Ghana Stock Exchange and Nairobi Securities Exchange to enable access to Africa’s capital markets

By Edlyn Cardoza

SecondSTAX, a technology company that is building solutions to enhance intra-Africa capital and investment flows, launched the SecondSTAX Portal – a technology-driven order management and execution routing system for investment firms – in Kenya and Ghana, enabling institutional investors across Africa to easily and directly invest in the Nairobi Securities Exchange and the Ghana Stock Exchange. 

“We see ourselves as building a bridge that will allow all the capital that is currently restricted to individual markets to have access to the entire continent. More importantly, we are doing this in Africa for Africans across the continent, and these partnerships with the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) are the first steps in our journey,” said Eugene Tawiah, CEO and co-founder of SecondSTAX. “We believe that there are many exciting and profitable investment opportunities across Africa and that by reimagining Africa’s capital markets, we will be able to position more investors to take advantage of them. We are already in discussions with other exchanges and we are looking forward to switching on those opportunities on our portal in the near future.”

With this initiative (facilitated in collaboration with Kestrel Capital (East Africa) Limited (Kenya) and Databank Group (Ghana), licensed broker-dealers, asset managers, large commercial banks, and other institutional investors from across the continent will find it easier to invest into Ghana and Kenya’s premier exchanges via SecondSTAX’s transparent, easy-to-use, cloud-based portal. Investors will also be able to invest in their native currencies, making a more comprehensive range of assets and opportunities available to more Africans and creating an efficient route to increased wealth on the continent.

“The SecondSTAX portal is a timely innovative tool at a time that African markets are accelerating efforts to integrate and foster cross-border trading. Partnering Fintech’s to develop innovative digital products and opening our markets to international businesses and investors via technology is a key pillar in GSE’s  3-year strategic plan,” said Ekow Afedzie, Managing Director, Ghana Stock Exchange. “A digital tool that puts cross-border trading at the fingertips of institutional and retail investors to easily buy and sell stocks and bonds through stockbrokers is a great boost to the cross-border trading integration efforts in Africa.”

Despite having some of the best-performing stocks and bonds globally, Africa’s exchanges are largely inaccessible to investors outside the jurisdictions where they have been listed. Over the last decade, African capital markets have raised more than US$ 246 billion in debt capital markets. More than $87 billion has been raised in equity capital markets, and equity indices have peaked at over 50% growth across the major regional exchanges. However, the siloed nature of these exchanges and insufficient data on the risk profiles of assets has led to limited access to capital for markets and high-growth assets for investors.    

SecondSTAX is building technology solutions for investment firms to power the seamless flow of capital and institutional investment across the continent. Starting with Ghana and Kenya, the SecondSTAX portal will consolidate all debt and equity capital markets throughout Africa, making accessing opportunities in relevant markets easier. The portal facilitates transactions by securely and efficiently routing orders onto existing mature capital markets infrastructure in complete compliance with local regulations. As a result, investors are empowered to do more for their clients and have the opportunity to earn more for themselves.

Geoffrey Odundo, Chief Executive of the Nairobi Securities Exchange Plc, said, “Linking markets is a very important priority for us, something that we are also committed to as part of the African Exchange Linkages Project. We are happy with this complementary approach and we look forward to working with SecondSTAX to explore more ways to scale up opportunities on our exchange. We believe that we must deepen trading within Africa, facilitate cross-border trading and make our markets more liquid, and platforms like SecondSTAX provide an effective tool for facilitating this agenda.”