African Financial Markets Initiative - 'Building Sustainable Local Currency Bond Markets for the Future'

11 September 2012
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African Development Bank (Abidjan)
press release

In today's multifaceted economies, African economies will largely depend on sustainable local currency bond markets to function efficiently. With this need, local currency bond market development has taken center stage as a key focal aspect of economic growth.

Taking place on 22-24 October 2012 in Tunis, the first African Financial Markets Initiative (AFMI) conference on "Building sustainable local currency bond markets for the future" will bring together policy makers and market participants to share experience on and contribute to critical issues facing the development of local currency bond markets in the continent. The audience will include representation from African central banks, government ministries, institutional investors, investment bankers, financial and legal advisors, credit rating agencies and other stakeholders, including high level speakers.

The discussions will cover major topics including: Development of primary and secondary markets, and the impact and importance of liquidity; Expansion and diversification of the investor base; enhancing infrastructure for securities settlement and payment systems; strengthening the taxation and accounting systems as well as the legal and regulatory framework. Ideas, solutions and best practices will be presented and discussed extensively on how to assess the importance of sovereign credit ratings for issuers; improving bond market data, data collection and dissemination, which are prerequisites for the creation of bond indices. The role of infrastructure bonds in the development of local currency bond markets will also be heard. Opportunities for side meetings and networking will also be available.

As part of the African Development Bank's strategy to strengthen the financial sector in African economies, it has launched the "African Financial Market Initiative" (AFMI) which is targeted to further the development of domestic African capital markets. The objectives of the AFMI are to contribute to the development of local currency debt markets in Africa; to reduce African countries dependency on foreign currency denominated debt; to help enlarge the investor base in African domestic debt markets and to improve availability and transparency of African fixed income markets related data, among others.

For more information, please contact:

Miss Nontle Kabanyane, Coordinator for the African Financial Markets Initiative

Mrs Houda Jellali Bougottaya, Team Assistant, Finance Complex

Read the original article on African Development Bank (AfDB).

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