“We did not become wealthy because we found diamonds. Others found diamonds and remain poor.” Neo Mooki, chairperson of the Botswana Stock Exchange, used that line to open her case for bringing a slice of Aliko Dangote’s $20 billion refinery to Gaborone.
The BSE wants a secondary listing of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery. Mooki, President Duma Boko and Vice President and Finance Minister Ndaba Gaolathe have all been part of the talks. The exchange is selling itself on Botswana’s macroeconomic stability, its regulatory framework and the liquidity held by local institutions.
Gaolathe led a working visit to Lagos in April and toured the 650,000-barrel-a-day refinery and the 3-million-metric-ton fertiliser plant. A capital markets and institutional investors roundtable followed in Gaborone, and that is where Mooki made her pitch.
“Africa is unmonetised”
“The Botswana market is ready to accommodate the listing, with the necessary regulatory frameworks already in place,” she said.
She argued that Botswana got rich by insisting on owning “a share of what happened on our own soil,” and that capital-market infrastructure is how other African economies can do the same. “Africa is not poor. Africa is unmonetised,” she said.
She was careful not to cast Botswana as a rival to Nigeria. “We are not asking to compete with Nigeria. Nigeria’s success is Africa’s success, and the Nigerian Exchange should be, and will be, the home of that listing.” Then the ask: “We do not want to be included afterwards. We want to be there on day one.”
The regional plan
BSE chief executive Aupa Monyatsi said internationalisation is one of the exchange’s strategic pillars. A Botswana listing could draw on the Committee of SADC Stock Exchanges, he said, and the BSE is connected to pools of liquidity outside the country. Structures are also being developed so individuals could take part without opening brokerage accounts in Nigeria or managing their own foreign-exchange hedges.
Collen Tapfumaneyi, who chairs the SADC committee, said Southern Africa is moving toward a more integrated investment market. He put the institutional capital in the region at an estimated $1.86 trillion. Under the interconnectivity model being proposed, Botswana would host a platform giving investors in participating markets a single entry point to securities.
“We’re talking of consolidation. We’re talking of integration. We’re talking of aggregation to ensure that Botswana becomes a window into the vast marketplace that Southern Africa provides,” Tapfumaneyi said.
Boko has called Dangote’s industrial expansion a model for African-led development. “African investors, African thinkers, African intellectuals, and African entrepreneurs are responsible… for the development… of the African continent,” he said. For Botswana’s pension funds and other institutional investors, a listing would open a route into a major African industrial company.
