Africa is missing out in billions of dollars from international investors, an aspect Wall Street Africa is attributing to an information deficit.
This is creating a striking disconnect between the continent’s growth prospects and the amount of international capital flowing into its businesses and projects.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that Africa accounted for about 2.5 per cent of global gross domestic product in 2024, but represented only 0.4 per cent of global public equity market capitalisation and about 0.1 per cent of outstanding corporate debt.
The business intelligence firm says the disparity is being compounded by a shortage of reliable, comparable and timely information, which reinforces perceptions of risk and leaves significant pools of institutional capital on the sidelines.
It is this gap that the organisation will seek to address in September when it convenes the second edition of Bullish Africa 2026 in New York during the United Nations General Assembly week.
Held under the theme “Africa Isn’t the Risk. The Intelligence Gap Is,” the forum will bring together African corporate issuers, institutional investors, financial institutions, regulators, stock exchanges, sovereign representatives and development finance institutions.
The argument comes as African markets demonstrate that investors can generate substantial returns when capital is deployed selectively.
Figures provided by Wall Street Africa show that the FTSE/JSE All Share Index returned 56.7 per cent in US dollar terms in 2025.
Nigeria’s exchange returned 60.6 per cent, while the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) gained 51.4 per cent and Egypt’s EGX 30 rose 49.9 per cent.
Yet these strong performances have not translated into a comparable increase in international institutional participation, pointing to an opportunity that extends beyond market returns.
The AfDB’s 2026 African Economic Outlook estimates that African institutional investors, including pension funds, insurers and sovereign wealth funds, control about $4 trillion in assets.
Less than 2.7 per cent, however, is allocated to infrastructure and productive sectors on the continent.
Even a modest reallocation could therefore unlock tens of billions of dollars for African businesses and projects.
The challenge is partly structural. African markets remain fragmented, with shallow liquidity, limited secondary-market activity, relatively few listed securities and weaknesses in financial infrastructure, risk assessment and price discovery.
But the information deficit is increasingly being recognised as a critical missing link.
In January 2025, the AfDB partnered with Prosper Africa and the US Treasury to develop a Credit Rating Online Data Platform to improve access to data and address skewed perceptions of African economic risk.
Wall Street Africa co-founder and CEO Eric Asuma argues that Africa’s investment case has already been established, but the information infrastructure needed to assess African companies with the same confidence applied to other markets remains underdeveloped.
“What has not been built is the information infrastructure that allows a pension trustee in Johannesburg or an allocator in New York to underwrite an African company with the same confidence they bring to any other market,” Asuma said.
Recent transactions illustrate the depth of the opportunity. In Kenya, the government’s March 2026 sale of a 65 per cent stake in Kenya Pipeline Company raised Sh106.3 billion, with the offer 105.7 per cent subscribed.
It became Kenya’s biggest share sale in almost two decades and demonstrated strong participation by domestic institutional investors.
Private capital is also showing resilience. The African Private Capital Association recorded 530 private capital transactions worth $5.1 billion in 2025.
Deal volume rose eight percent despite a five percent decline in value. East Africa attracted $1.2 billion, up 75 per cent, with Kenya accounting for 87 per cent of the region’s deal value.
The broader investment picture is equally significant. UN Trade and Development estimates that Africa attracted about $70 billion in foreign direct investment in 2025, roughly one-third above its 2010–2024 average.
For global investors, the opportunity spans infrastructure, financial services, energy, technology, agribusiness, healthcare and consumer markets. At the same time, deeper regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area could further expand the addressable market.
Asuma said that Bullish Africa will focus on disclosure, governance, reporting, free float, market accessibility and investor requirements, seeking to move the debate from whether Africa is risky to whether individual companies are sufficiently transparent and investable.
According to Wall Street Africa President Andrew Barden, the Kenya Pipeline transaction signals that African institutional capital is already moving into the equity market.
“The next challenge is building a stronger pipeline of investment-ready companies and connecting them efficiently with global pools of capital. This is the opportunity behind Bullish Africa: not to eliminate risk, but to make it measurable, comparable and ultimately investable.”
