Joining me is Neo Mooki, Chairperson of the Botswana Stock Exchange. Neo, thank you very much for joining Fintech TV today.
Thank you very much, Lucy, for having me. I am honoured to be here.
What are your key takeaways from the event so far?
The event I took part in was where the Egyptian Stock Exchange was signed on to join Tabadul — the trading system that connects all of the Gulf countries to trade together and be connected. Its goal is to improve liquidity, governance, and connectivity across the Gulf. But as you might already know, Botswana was the first country to join Tabadul in July. So for me, that was a key highlight — to see one more African country, because of course Egypt is an African country, follow suit and join. It really fulfils my intention when Botswana signed on. At the time I said we need to make sure that the Gulf and Africa are better connected. That bridge was what we were building in July, and my vision was to see more and more countries cross that bridge.
Can you tell us about the Botswana Stock Exchange itself — what do investors need to know?
The first thing is that Botswana, being small and fairly unknown, you would not know that it is actually one of the top five exchanges in Africa. Until recently we were one of the top three. But with the Dangote listing — which was a historic event — Nigeria has overtaken Botswana. We still have a market capitalisation of over $100 billion and it is growing. A lot of our listings are international companies who have chosen to dual list in Botswana. I am proud of that because international companies have found Botswana as a safe haven to raise capital and they have chosen to stay. Botswana is investment grade — one of only two investment grade countries in Africa. We have no exchange controls. We are setting the exchange up to be the premier capital raising hub in Africa. And when international investors come and invest, you are not investing alone — we have more than $20 billion of pension fund money looking for places to be invested and put to work.
What is your internationalisation strategy for the exchange going forward?
The future of capital markets is connected capital markets. You cannot win on your own. This is why we signed up to Tabadul — which gives Gulf investors access to African capital and vice versa. The future is really reconfiguring the centre of power to build the Gulf-Africa pipeline. That is my goal. In doing that we also de-risk some of the pipes that have been fragile this year due to global conflicts and tariff wars. We really need to make sure we are connecting the Gulf — which is the capital of capital — to Africa, which is the next frontier and the biggest mispriced asset of our generation.
How is the Botswana Stock Exchange thinking about technology, stablecoins, and digital assets in its roadmap?
We are working with a very big stablecoin player — if not the biggest of our generation — to start tokenising real world assets. I always say Africa is un-monetised. Africa does not have a resource issue. It has a structure problem. We have the biggest resource pool — from gold to diamonds to copper. The world cannot transition without Africa. What we are working on, also as part of our work with the DMRC which Botswana connected to this year, is to tokenise real world assets so Africa starts participating in its resources across the full value chain — instead of what has been happening throughout centuries, which is Africa exporting its minerals and importing the finished products and the inflation with it. That is what has kept Africa poor. We are trying to change the narrative.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us on Fintech TV today.
Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you very much for having me.
