Conduits of Capital

2.3 African Financial Centres –
Current and Future Outlook
All five reports compare existing African financial centres and
analyse their prospects for the future, but the comparisons
focus on different dimensions:
• Bella Research provides a detailed analysis of Mauritius
and then compares it to other African financial centres
according to legal and cultural aspects considered by
fund managers;
• Econsult Botswana compares African financial centres
based on their regulatory environment (including
political will to support financial centre development)
and on how these centres fare in selected classifications
or assessments of financial centres including the
IMF’s listing of Offshore Financial Centres, Z/Yen’s
Global Financial Centres Index, the OECD-Global
Forum Assessment, and the Tax Justice Network’s
assessment of financial secrecy;
• Fuchs compares African financial centres according to
the size of their private sector compared to GDP, the
size of their private sector asset base and the volume
of private equity investment they attract;
• Lion’s Head compares African financial centres on the
characteristics of a financial centre that are important
to financial practitioners, including the strength of
capital markets, GDP, financial market institutions,
infrastructure, quality of life, legal framework, stability
and professional services; and,
• Z/Yen compares selected African financial centres and
peer group financial centres based on data from the
Global Financial Centres Index and according to the
financial centre type and stability, their competitiveness,
and their reputational advantage. Financial centre
performance is also explored across sectors of
financial services (investment management, banking,
insurance, government and regulatory, professional
services) and dimensions of competitiveness
(business environment, financial sector development,
infrastructure, human capital, reputation and general
factors).
All five reports consider well-known African financial centres
such as Mauritius, Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg. As
Table 4 below shows some reports go beyond these to
include other financial centres in Sub-Saharan and North
Africa in their analysis.
Table 4 – African financial centres analysed in each report
Topic
Bella
Research
Econsult
Botswana
Accra (Ghana) X X
Cape Town (South Africa)
X
Cape Verde
X
Casablanca (Morocco) X (X) X X
Djibouti
X
Gaborone (Botswana) X X X X
Kigali (Rwanda) X (X)
Lagos (Nigeria) X X X X X
Liberia
X
Libreville (Gabon)
X
Port Louis (Mauritius) X X X X X
Nairobi (Kenya) X X X X X
Johannesburg (South Africa) X X X X X
Seychelles X X
Fuchs
Lion’s
Head
Z/Yen
44 |