Joining me now is Neo Mooki, Chairperson of the Botswana Stock Exchange. Neo, welcome to the show. Tell me about what you are seeing in African capital markets right now.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Look, I think Africa is at a really exciting inflection point. There is a lot happening and I think there's a real recognition now that capital markets are central to Africa's development agenda.
You have spoken about the democratisation of African wealth. What do you mean by that?
Democratisation — what that means is having African wealth more in the hands of Africans. Let me give you an example. Last week I was with one of my girlfriends. She sits on the board of a gold mining company — an African mining company. She is not African. She was able to invest in the shares of the company five or six years ago, and that small allocation has enabled her to become worth $50 million today. And why am I bringing this up? I think that we have taught ourselves — Africans and across the world — to spend. We have taught ourselves to consume. My story is about teaching Africans that they can own. That they can become owners of the resources that are here in Africa. Because Africa is the next frontier. The biggest growth is going to come out of Africa. And I would have done my job if I can spread enough of the message — if capital markets can play a big part in making sure that ordinary people have a share of the wealth and the growth of African resources.
Can African exchanges use cross-listings and shared infrastructure to create greater scale?
There is absolutely no way else to build scale. One of the topics I talk about is the frictions that exist between different African markets and also with the global economy. A lot of countries have a history of looking inwards, operating inwards — part of it is because of these frictions. We need to make a concerted effort to collaborate within Africa and use the structures that enable trade to actually build capital markets across Africa and build scale. We also need to connect with the rest of the world because you cannot win on your own. We have recently connected with the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange and what that does is it opens up our liquidity to have access to over $1.4 trillion of markets. When a company lists in Botswana, they are able to access that. And the reset Dangote IPO — which is a historic moment for the world, a historic moment for Africa — the key to creating scale is to demonstrate that not only Nigerians can participate in that part of Africa's ambition, but also the rest of Africa and the rest of the world can.
What do Gulf investors need to see before committing more capital into African markets?
Capital does not flow to good stories. Capital does not flow to need. Capital flows to trust. That is where capital flows. Middle Eastern investors as well as global investors need to see Africa building the pipes — the structures and instruments that enable them to deploy capital safely. This is where exchanges play a role because exchanges are actually trust architecture. There is a lot of governance around it. Transparency. Price discovery. All of that. And that is why exchanges are going to play a much bigger role in terms of enabling the pipes that allow institutional capital to be deployed safely. When I worked in the UK in asset management post-Covid, we deployed in nine months over a billion into infrastructure as part of a programme to support regeneration. Not a cent of that came to Africa. And you know why? Because we had not done the work. So there is a lot of work for us to do as Africans to make sure we are building ourselves up to attract capital — because people trust that they can get their money back. And that is where exchanges play a role.
Thank you so much for coming to the show with us.
Wonderful. I look forward to the next time.
