For years, listing on Nasdaq or the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been the ultimate ambition for many of Africa’s most successful startups. But at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) on Wednesday, a different vision took centre stage: Africa’s future tech champions should be built and eventually listed on African exchanges.
Africa has produced a growing number of billion-dollar startups, but its capital markets have yet to keep pace. That gap dominated discussions at the JSE on Wednesday during the African activation of the AT50 Index, a new benchmark designed to make Africa’s largest private technology companies more visible to institutional investors before they pursue listings or other liquidity events.
The rules-based benchmark, launched at the London Stock Exchange in January, is a market intelligence platform that measures the continent’s leading scaled private technology companies. After Johannesburg, the AT50’s next African activation will take place at the Egyptian Exchange in Cairo on September 23 as organisers continue engaging exchanges and investors across the continent.
The underlying message from Wednesday’s event was that if Africa wants globally competitive technology champions, it must also build universally accepted capital markets. For Gbite Oduneye, Chair of the AT50 Index, that begins by changing where founders look when they start thinking about life after venture capital.
“Many founders dream of ringing the bell at Nasdaq or the LSE without fully considering African exchanges,” Oduneye said during a fireside discussion. “The wealthiest people in almost every African country built listed businesses on their domestic exchanges. I’m not saying every technology company should list immediately, but we need more conversations.”
Oduneye noted that African technology companies have matured dramatically over the past 15 years, but capital markets have struggled to keep pace. “We have built phenomenal companies across the continent,” he said. “What has been missing is a consistent way to measure them and benchmark them.”
He said the AT50 was created to bridge that gap by helping institutional investors better understand fast-growing private technology companies before they become public issuers. For the JSE, attracting those companies is part of a broader strategy to strengthen Africa’s capital markets.
Sam Mokorosi, the JSE’s Head of Origination and Deals, said technology companies eventually reach a point where raising another venture capital round is no longer enough. “As companies reach this level of scale, the conversation naturally begins to evolve,” he stated. “The focus shifts from simply building businesses to sustaining long-term growth, and increasingly from raising capital to accessing the right kind of capital.”
He said the exchange has introduced reforms to simplify the listing process while preserving strong governance standards and expanding alternative funding routes through secondary listings, private placements and other capital-raising mechanisms. “Growth does not follow a single path, and neither does capital formation,” Mokorosi said. “We believe that efficient access to capital and strong corporate governance should go hand in hand.”
South Africa’s government signalled that it sees deep capital markets as part of its broader digital economy ambitions. Khusela Sangoni, Chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies, said governance remains central to building investor confidence. “Strong governance is far more than a compliance exercise,” she said. “It is a competitive advantage.”
That emphasis on governance was echoed by fintech leaders participating in the discussions. Carsten Höltkemeyer, CEO of South African fintech Yoco, said scaling a fintech business is no longer just about acquiring customers. “It also requires the operational maturity expected by larger, long-term investors,” he said.
Meanwhile, Fidelis Chiwara, Head of Global Expansion at payments giant Flutterwave, said companies must constantly balance launching new customer-facing products with investing in compliance, internal controls and operational resilience.
“The challenge is deciding whether to invest in defence before you invest in offence,” he said. “Sometimes you simply have to let go of an opportunity because you first need to strengthen your underlying product, your systems, and your processes.”
Whether African founders ultimately choose Johannesburg over New York or London remains an open question. Local Exchanges continue to face challenges around liquidity, analyst coverage, valuations, and investor appetite for high-growth technology businesses. Yet organisers of the AT50 believe those conversations need to begin now, before Africa’s next generation of technology companies reaches the public markets.
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