Kristin Myers: Now, Africa is home to some of the best-performing stock markets on the planet. Last year, Nigeria’s main index gained 51% while Ghana’s market returned nearly 80. But for most investors, including Africans living abroad, getting a piece of those markets means a different broker and a different account for every single country. Now, my guest today wants to put them all in one app and to start it at $1. And they’re asking a bigger question: who gets to own Africa’s growth? But first, let’s take a look at the company. The road from an idea to the opening bell starts right now.
Africa is home to some of the world’s most exciting investment opportunities, but there’s a problem. Its stock markets are fragmented, making it difficult for investors to access opportunities across borders. But that’s what Dr. Rachel Laryea and Scanlon Botha are working to change. With experience at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, they’re hoping to build my.stocks Africa. The idea: connect Africa’s capital markets through one digital platform, giving investors access to stocks, bonds and private investment opportunities. And major opportunities like the Dangote Refinery IPO are putting African capital formation in the spotlight. But the ambition goes further, connecting African investors to global markets and the African diaspora to opportunities back home. But here’s the challenge: can my.stocks navigate different regulations, currencies and financial systems and build a scalable investment platform? From Startup to Stock Exchange, Dr. Rachel Laryea and Scanlon Botha are next.
And joining us now here at the desk are Scanlon Botha, co-founder of my.stocks Africa, and Dr. Rachel Laryea, anthropologist and author of Black Capitalists. Thank you both so much for coming. So, Scanlon, I want to start with you now. You’ve called my.stocks Africa’s own Robinhood. What can investors do on my.stocks that they perhaps couldn’t do a year ago?
Scanlon Botha: Awesome. So essentially, at my.stocks, we want to open African capital markets to the world and give international investors access to all the stock exchanges on the African continent through a unified platform.
Kristin Myers: Yeah. And so, Rachel, I want to talk to you. I feel like I should call you Dr. Laryea, actually, and put respect on your PhD, but you have a book, Black Capitalists, as I mentioned just a second ago. Now, it argues that capitalism isn’t going away. So I want to ask you, because it seems like the question is who gets to use its tools. So what is the big idea? Where does a platform like this, do you think, sit inside of that entire ecosystem?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think when you take the context of the world that we’re going to see by 2050, we know that a quarter of the world’s population by 2050 will exist on the African continent. We also know that 1 in 3 young people by that same time will be African. And we also know that today, 60% of the world’s remaining arable land exists on the African continent. So we know the next generation of great companies is going to come from the continent. But the question is who will have ownership over them? And so it’s really, I think, platforms like my.stocks Africa that are democratizing access to the world and really, you know, wrestling with this question of who gets to own the value that’s going to be created over the next 25 plus years.
Kristin Myers: So let’s talk a little bit about the problem, because, Scanlon, Africa has more than 30 stock exchanges, obviously different currencies. So walk us through an investor that’s in New York that hears those incredible returns, right, that you can get in some of the capital markets inside of Africa, and they want a piece of that pie. So what would it take for someone in New York to buy a stock in Nairobi or in Lagos? And what did you have to build to essentially fix that problem?
Scanlon Botha: Yeah. So essentially, as I mentioned, we built, um, Rachel would you like to go?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah, sure. So it’s really around the infrastructure and the piping to do the work of getting access to African capital markets. And so just like the conversation was around Robinhood, for example, anybody from anywhere in the world who might not have had access, for example, to buy stock in Lagos, Nairobi, as you said, can go onto the platform, where the UI is seamless and has the opportunity to not only get access, but also learn about the different opportunities. It’s an investment platform really for retail investors and institutional investors as well. And so the process is, as you might imagine, on Robinhood or, you know, E-Trade or any other platform that gives you access to the African markets.
Kristin Myers: So right now, if someone did, however, want to buy a stock, would they essentially have to open up a different brokerage account in every single country to gain access to every single different capital market? Is that essentially how the piping is working right now? Because there is no unified African stock exchange, the way that they have created in Europe, for example, because of the fragmentation.
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Sure, sure. So it’s really about creating that centralized place so that you’re not having to do that kind of replication, the fees and all of that that comes with that kind of fragmented process. So it’s really around my.stocks being the one-stop shop for you to get access to 54 potential markets in the long term.
Kristin Myers: Right. Okay. So talk to me a little bit about the performance. I mentioned it at the beginning. I really feel like I need to say these numbers again. So Nigeria 51%, Ghana returned nearly 80. Now, the S&P 500, I mean, it’s been struggling. We’ve got an update today. Right now we’re looking at less than 20%. So this is an incredible return that you’re going to find inside of Africa’s capital markets. So I’m curious to know why you think global investors at large haven’t decided to follow some of those returns and express even more interest, unless they already are expressing a lot of increased interest inside of Africa and trying to get access to some of those capital markets.
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah, I think some of the narrative thus far has really been around lack of information or the landscape being positioned or portrayed as incredibly risky, and a lot of questions that investors might naturally have. But again, I think what is being fed oftentimes is misinformation about what the actual value is, what the return potential is, and what the opportunities are. And so I think part of the work of this platform, when we’re talking about democratizing access, is also about demystifying or busting these myths that exist about the stock markets on the continent. And so that’s a big element of this too. And so when you say those numbers, people think, like, oh, wow, I’m missing out on an opportunity, right? Let me rethink, you know, the narratives or the scripts, the preconceived notions about what value looks like on the continent, what companies are doing and how they’re growing as well.
Kristin Myers: Okay, so let’s do perhaps a little bit of the myth busting. And this one’s for either of you, because there are still risks involved in terms of accessing African capital markets, one of them going to be currency risks. What should investors know about the currency risks as they currently exist, and how perhaps could having access to one platform, one app, maybe address some of those risks?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in terms of currency risk, again, some of the questions like, okay, there’s 54 markets here that we’re talking about. How does that translate? And the questions around that, especially for investors who are here in the US. But a lot of the work in terms of my.stocks is how do we alleviate that question around currency risk as well? And so really creating a streamlined process where that’s not even part of the consideration set. Even myself, I’ve gone on the platform and really tested it to see, even from the consumer side or the end user, how this works and how you can invest USD and still engage in the markets. And it totally alleviates that kind of currency risk or question that Western-based investors might have as well.
Kristin Myers: Yeah. So right now a lot of Africans abroad, and we already know, send billions of dollars home back to the continent. We’ve interviewed several founders and entrepreneurs right here on this platform about making that process easier. I’m curious to know what changes in your mind, Rachel, when some of that money that is being used to send home, instead of being used to necessarily support family, is actually being used to buy ownership in the capital markets and in some of these companies.
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah, it’s really revolutionary if you think about it. In 2024, $56 billion was sent home in remittances, which outpaced what we saw in foreign investment and in aid. And that money went home really in the sense of obligation, when we’re remitting home to family members that were taken care of. But what you said is really pivotal in terms of what does that look like when the conversation is now sending capital home for the purpose of investment and ownership, beyond meeting familial obligations or a need? And so, as I was mentioning before, at the top of our conversation, when we look at the future landscape of our world and how it’s shifting, and we know historically who has been left out in the conversation around ownership and equity, this is a huge opportunity for people who have not been able to really seize and own the value around companies to have access to that.
Kristin Myers: Do you view this as a watershed moment in terms of wealth generation?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Absolutely.
Kristin Myers: Inside of the concept?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Absolutely.
Kristin Myers: Okay. So I want to talk about this IPO that everyone has really been talking about, obviously the Dangote Refinery. I think it was the first time that I really started to hear folks that weren’t paying so much attention to African capital markets really interested in being able to access an IPO. I think the price was obviously quite attractive, but also the success that the refinery has had. So now my.stocks is actually giving users a way to access that IPO. I’m wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about the demand that you’ve seen. Just as I mentioned, I’ve spoken to a lot of folks that have been really interested in that IPO. Has the demand also followed on my.stocks? Is there a comment that you can make about some of that demand you’ve seen?
Scanlon Botha: I can take that one. There was great demand, and I think also, seeing the youth come through in Google search, all the youth were looking for ways and apps to invest in the IPO. Also, through the app, we processed about $11 million.
Kristin Myers: Oh, wow. Okay.
Scanlon Botha: 50,000 users in two months. Um, and yeah, it was a great success in the last month or two.
Kristin Myers: Now, my.stocks pitches itself as Africa’s own Robinhood, borrowing a playbook Wall Street already knows pretty well. Now, Robinhood made stock trading free and mobile, and last quarter it brought in a record $1.42 billion in revenue, almost $1.5 billion. And that’s up 12% from about a year ago, and it now has nearly 29 million funded customers, with about $400 billion in assets on the platform. And it is going global, with approval from Dubai’s financial regulator and plans to roll out there in 2027. And Robinhood is valued at roughly $75 billion. Now, my.stocks is at a very different stage. It’s got about 14,000 users in beta, but the bet is the same: that simple, cheap access can turn savers into shareholders. And this time it is across nine African exchanges instead of just one market. We’re back now with Scanlon Botha, co-founder of my.stocks Africa, and Dr. Rachel Laryea, author of Black Capitalists. So, pretty big bets if my.stocks goes in the same footsteps as Robinhood. So I want to talk about some of those numbers that I just mentioned: 14,000 users in 68 countries without spending anything on marketing, which is pretty incredible. So can you tell us a little bit about who these users are? What are they trying to buy right now? Is this a lot of young folks that are using it like Robinhood was when they first signed people up?
Scanlon Botha: Yeah, I think it’s a mix of both, of the younger generation and some retail investors back home. And also, like we mentioned, the African diaspora. [unclear: “That’s in 100 billion every single year.”] We’re also looking to capture a percentage of that market.
Kristin Myers: Rachel, you study race and capitalism in the United States and around the world. I’m curious to know how that conversation changes when the capital is flowing into Africa instead of out of it, which historically has always been the case, not just financially, but also in terms of minerals and other resources.
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Right, right. And I think what’s so compelling about the time that we’re living in is how that capital can be leveraged to really bolster African nations from a sovereignty perspective, but then also socially, politically, economically as well. And I think what’s really important to myself is the diaspora. I’m a dual citizen. I was born here in the US, but my family is in Ghana. And so I’m always thinking about how I can create opportunities for myself around ownership, for my family as well. And so that’s really part of, I think, the ethos and the desire that a lot of people have in terms of how you can activate ownership for yourself and your families.
Kristin Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about some of these African capital markets, because they can move pretty fast. One Nairobi stock I have written here jumped more than 1900% in a single session. [unclear: “1,900% returns is great”]. But that’s not usually volatility that investors here really like to hear about. So how does a first-time investor get protected when they put a dollar in and they do decide to buy something? And I’m curious to know how the regulation works as well. Obviously, capital markets here are very heavily regulated. How does that work in Africa? You know, could you take it?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Okay. Sure. I mean, I think when it comes to regulation, and this is the part where platforms like my.stocks are really trying to inform investors, and I think that’s the educational component of this as well, in terms of how do you do the work of de-risking your investment, because any investment has a risk attached to it. When you talk about volatility, especially for younger markets, you’re going to see components of that. And so it’s really about how can you pair access with education so that people are making informed decisions and really know, as best they can, what they’re getting themselves into. And so that’s, I think, the framework and the resources that a platform like my.stocks Africa can offer to foreign investors as well, who might not be on the ground and have a better understanding of dynamics within the country.
Kristin Myers: Now, my.stocks has how many... how many capital markets are on the...
Scanlon Botha: 54.
Kristin Myers: Okay. Only operating nine markets at the moment?
Scanlon Botha: Okay. We’re still waiting for some licenses to come through, but so far we’re just operating in nine markets.
Kristin Myers: Are there different regulators for every single country that you have to work with?
Scanlon Botha: Yeah, we partnered with some brokerage firms that are already licensed, so we piggyback with their license. So essentially we just become the technology layer and offer that to our clients.
Kristin Myers: Speaking about the piggybacking, you’re working with Coinbase’s Base network, right, to put African stocks and bonds on blockchain. And we’ve been hearing this a lot, moving things to blockchain, particularly when it comes to Africa, especially for financing, micro lending, banking, etc. I’m curious to know what blockchain, what tokenization solves for an African investor that perhaps an app alone, without that kind of layer, wouldn’t be able to do.
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah. I mean, I think it just creates further access where capital and other forms is not the most accessible. So it’s really a question of, like, I think my.stocks, for example, is best positioned to offer the infrastructure pipeline that makes it possible. And so leveraging technologies like blockchain, at the end of the day, for the end user, that creates a streamlined opportunity to invest in ways that they might not have been able to before. So that’s really what the value proposition is when you’re talking about blockchain and integration into a platform like this.
Kristin Myers: Now, you said just a moment ago that obviously you are [unclear: “Canadian”]. I believe you said you were a dual citizen, and you advise leaders inside of Ghana. Now, I had mentioned that Ghana’s stock performance was one of the best of all, about 80%. So let’s just call that 80% returns last year. Is there something that is needed, not only for the diaspora, but for global investors, to really have better trust, to really start putting larger sums of money into African capital markets? And what are the pieces that they don’t necessarily trust right now? We talked about currency, which is of course a real risk. But what are some other areas where they feel a little bit uncomfortable putting their money to work inside of it?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah, it’s a great question. And I would say something that I see the most is sometimes cultural disconnects, or just how does one navigate a market from the beginning? And so oftentimes, and I’ll tell people, when it is a conversation about investing larger amounts or really deepening their wallet share, take the time to actually visit and spend the time. And oftentimes, you know, sometimes you’ll hear these horror stories of folks who invest and they’re missing a knowledge gap in terms of the culture, politics, the dynamics of a place. And so I always invite people to think about that, to take the time to be there, to experience it. And that helps inform some of those knowledge gaps that exist around, oh, how can I further engage? And as I mentioned too, I think some of the narratives overemphasize risk or overemphasize fear about engaging in the African markets. And so I think the best way to overcome that is to experience it and to spend time to really better understand the people, the companies, the cultural customs and norms, which then starts to demystify how we’ve really been trained in some ways to think about African markets.
Kristin Myers: Are there things that you think African capital markets also need to do to address some of these very real risks, not just for retail investors, but also for institutional investors? I mean, questions like liquidity, which we do talk about here in the United States, particularly around private market access. Right. But are there things that need to happen from the banking system and then the capital market system that you think would also better position African capital markets to really pull in, again, not just retail dollars but institutional dollars globally as well?
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Absolutely. And I think if you think about it simply, it’s making sure that from each side they’re speaking the language of the other side. And so if there are questions around regulation or governance or operations, to be able to speak that language to foreign investors, so there’s a shared understanding, because that ultimately is what’s going to lead to greater investment. And so that’s a lot of the work that I do even in my advising capacity: how do we create shared understanding? Because the work is there. It’s being proven through the numbers and the data. But how do we tell that story in a way that’s going to be compelling and understood? And I think also, inadvertently, do that work of demystifying some of those preconceived notions that then create access and opportunity for people.
Kristin Myers: So this question is for both of you. It’s a question that I ask everyone that sits in this seat. I talked a little bit about Robinhood, what it’s valued at now, $75 billion. my.stocks Africa is obviously trying to follow somewhat in those footsteps by becoming Africa’s Robinhood. Now, you are trying to raise $5 million right now. I’m curious to know what that looks like, that road from where you are now to ringing the bell. If you think about ringing the bell and maybe taking my.stocks Africa public one day. And, Rachel, what would it mean for there to be an Africa’s Robinhood that went public?
Scanlon Botha: I think that’s a big task at hand, to go IPO. It’s still very early days. As I mentioned, we’re raising 5 million at a 50 million valuation, and we will just continue having those conversations with VCs. I think it’s a long way to go in terms of an IPO, but that is the end goal in mind, you know, the goal of hopefully ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange. I think that’s every founder’s dream. So, yeah. Rachel, if you want to add anything to that.
Dr. Rachel Laryea: Yeah. You know, it would be groundbreaking, and I think the opportunity really could be revolutionary. When you look at the history of race and capitalism, especially Black participation in capitalism, Western capitalism, as you know it, in part was built on Black bodies. And so when we talk about ownership and what it means for the diaspora, for foreign investors, for those on the continent to be able to develop ownership and equity into the future and really start to rethink and recalibrate our positionality within the economic system, it’s huge in terms of what it can mean politically, economically, socially for people on the continent. And that will be felt in terms of reverberations around the world, too.
Kristin Myers: All right. Thank you both so much. Scanlon Botha, co-founder of my.stocks Africa, Dr. Rachel Laryea, author of Black Capitalists. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
