Emerging Africa LTD

Foreword

The African Stock Markets Handbook, published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on the occasion of the 2003 African Capital Markets Forum, provides investors with a comprehensive overview of the Africanstock industry. With cross-country data, country profiles and detailed market information on all 18 African stock exchanges, it should help potential investors consider the many investment opportunities now available through the continent’s financial markets.

During the last decade, the number of African Stock Exchanges has risen from 10 to 18. There are now stock markets in Botswana, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These stock exchanges range from the larger South African and Egyptian exchanges that were established in the 1880s to smaller exchanges in Uganda and Mozambique only in the past four years.

African equities represent a vastly underutilized option for international investors. These are growing markets that have provided attractive returns in the last several years and can achieve the goal of portfolio diversification as they offer a superior risk/return profile that is not affected by trends in the more developed markets. Many African equities have very attractive Price/Earnings ratios. And as this Handbook shows, two of the top five world best performing stock exchanges were African markets; Sub Sahara Africa indices, weighted by country market capitalisation, have outperformed most developed and emerging markets indices. The cumulative returns in the last five years in US dollars for sub-Saharan-Africa has been 4.3% in comparison to –3.9% for the S&P 500 and –15.5% for the UK FTSE 100.

UNDP, as the UN’s global development network, has organized the 2003 African Capital Markets Forum in collaboration with the New York Stock Exchange and the African Stock Exchanges Association and published this Handbook to help the African countries derive more benefits from portfolio investments and further integrate in the global economy. By mobilizing private capital, Africa can promote the economic growth needed to reduce poverty.

Zéphirin Diabré
Associate Administrator
United Nations Development Program