ASEA synergises, generates $1.2m grants in one year to drive efficient African exchanges

28 African exchanges representing 32 economies and over 1,100 listed companies have for the past four years had Oscar Onyema as it’s leader.

Onyema, who is the outgoing president of the African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) and the CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has said his leadership is ending on an exciting note, as the 28 member association signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday.

According to Onyema, the MOU will birth a number of planned initiatives. He also said the association’s strategic relationships in the past year alone has resulted in grants worth approximately $1.2 million from the Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Africa and the Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation (KOAFEC) fund via the Africa Development Bank (AfDB).

He said “the grants received to date are targeted at the African Exchanges Linkage Project (AELP), ASEA secondment programme, information portal and annual conferences.

These programmes are critical levers of success for ASEA and we aim to continue to broaden and deepen our relationships in order to create increasing value for members and the African financial market.”

Elaborating on successes achieved so far, Onyema said a key win for the association is its “success in elevating the profile of ASEA on the global stage and the expansion of our portfolio of strategic relationships and alliances.”

Expressing confidence in the newly elected executives of the association, Onyema said “I feel proud and honoured to have been able to lead ASEA, and I trust that it will continue to flourish under the astute leadership of the newly elected president and executive committee.”

To ensure value is delivered for members and partners, Onyema reiterated that the association has created a five year strategy running from 2019 – 2023 which will provide a structured approach to delivering on its initiatives.

“The strategy is designed to position ASEA as the authoritative source of information on African exchanges and as such, we recently remodelled the statistics portal of our website in order to present quality statistics in insightful ways. I encourage you to keep abreast of interesting developments in African exchanges using this resource.

Other goals the strategy aims to achieve include intensifying the association’s advocacy and capacity building functions,” Onyema said.