DANGOTE LISTING BECOMES TEST OF BOTSWANA’S CAPITAL MARKETS AMBITION

The Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) is making an ambitious pitch to position itself as a regional capital-raising hub, and at the centre of that effort is one of Africa's biggest industrial names: Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote. Botswana's Vice President and the BSE have been holding discussions aimed at securing a secondary listing of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery on the local exchange.

For Botswana, the attraction goes beyond adding a large company to the domestic bourse. A Dangote listing would test whether the BSE can turn its ambitions for regional integration into a functioning market capable of connecting Southern African investors with large African companies.

It would also give Botswana an opportunity to put its substantial institutional ca pital to work in a large African industrial business while raising the profile of the country's capital market.

A bold pitch

The campaign gained momentum after Vice President and Finance Minister Ndaba Gaolathe led a working visit to Lagos in April, wher e he toured the Dangote Refinery and Dangote Fertiliser Plant.

The visit was followed by a Capital Markets & Institutional Investors Roundtable in Gaborone hosted by the BSE, and attended by institutional investors , regulators and key state institutions.

BSE Chairperson Neo Mooki told the gathering that the Botswana market was ready to accommodate the listing, with the necessary regulatory frameworks already in place.

But Mooki's pitch went beyond regulation.

With Dangote sitting among senior government officials, pension fund leaders and capital-ma rket executives, she sought to frame the proposed listing as part of a much bigger question about who owns Africa's economic future.

“Mr Dangote — welcome to Botswana,” she said.

Mooki then took the audience back to Botswana's beginnings.

“In 27 days, Bots wana turns 60,” she said, recalling a country that began with little infrastructure, few graduates, no industry and no stock exchange.

Her argument was that Botswana's transformation had not simply been the result of discovering diamonds, but of securing a n ownership stake in the resources beneath its soil.

“We did not become wealthy because we found diamonds. Others found diamonds and remain poor. We became wealthy because we insisted on owning a share of what happened on our own soil.”

She used that histo ry to make a broader argument about African capital.

“Africa is not poor. Africa is unmonetised.”

For Mooki, the problem is not simply a shortage of resources, but the failure to convert economic value into ownership and wealth.

“And value becomes wealth t hrough one mechanism only. Not aid. Not goodwill. Capital infrastructure. The unglamorous plumbing that turns a thing you have into a thing you own.”

That, she argued, is the role of the BSE.

“Why should Africa own so little of what Africa builds?” she ask ed.

From Lagos to Gaborone

Mooki's pitch was informed by the BSE delegation's visit to the Dangote Refinery in April.

“I have been shown many things in this career that were described to me as world-class. That was the first time I have stood inside a picture of audacity. 650 000 barrels a day,” she said.

Dangote, she argued, represents the kind of African industrial ambition that the continent needs to finance and own.

The proposed listing would give Southern African investors access to such a n asset through the region's own capital-market infrastructure.

“We are not asking to compete with Nigeria. Nigeria’s success is Africa’s success, and the Nigerian Exchange should be, and will be, the home of that listing,” Mooki said.

“We are offering to build the bridge — a structure that lets Southern African capital participate in local currency, through local brokers, settled here, with nothing standing between the saver and the asset.”

Then came the more direct pitch: “We do not want to be included af terwards. We want to be there on day one.”

President Duma Boko has also backed the broader idea of African capital and entrepreneurship driving development on the continent.

During a courtesy call at the Office of the President, Boko argued that African in vestors, entrepreneurs, thinkers and intellectuals had a responsibility to drive the continent's development.

BSE looks beyond Botswana

The Dangote pursuit forms part of a broader BSE strategy to internationalise the exchange and deepen its links with ot her African markets.

BSE Chief Executive Officer Aupa Monyatsi said internationalisation was one of the exchange's strategic pillars.

“Through that, we are integrated with the SADC Committee of Stock Exchanges (COSE), meaning that when we anchor any listin g in Botswana, it is the capacity of the whole of SADC that comes to the table,” he said.

The BSE is also seeking to make it easier for investors outside Botswana to participate in major listings.

Monyatsi said the exchange had been working with Dangote In dustries and banking partners on structures that would allow individual investors to participate without having to open brokerage accounts in Nigeria.

The arrangements would also seek to reduce the need for individual investors to manage foreign-exchange h edging themselves by consolidating that process through broker distribution.

“These are structures that have proven to work in Zimbabwe, in South Africa, and indeed globally,” Monyatsi said.

“So we are not creating anything new, but we are riding on preced ence that has been established in other jurisdictions.”

The regional play

The Dangote discussions are taking place alongside a broader push to integrate Southern Africa's capital markets.

Collen Tapfumaneyi, chairperson of the Committee of SADC Stock Exc hanges (CoSSE), said the region needed to move towards functioning as a single investment market rather than a collection of separate national exchanges.

He said the objective was to connect the region's institutional capital with investment opportunities across borders.

The problem, he argued, was not necessarily a lack of capital.

“The region does not just have idle capital. Our challenge is implementation — connecting that capital efficiently to quality opportunities across our borders.”

Work is under way on regional initiatives intended to improve that connectivity, including proposals for an interconnectivity hub through which investors in participating markets could access investment opportunities across Southern Africa through a single entry point.

Tapfumaneyi said the BSE was positioned to play a central role in that system.

The exchange already serves as the secretariat of CoSSE and, under the proposed model, would host the platform linking participating capital markets.

One proposal involves a sponsored depository-receipt structure anchored on the BSE, allowing one listing to provide investors across several Southern African markets with access to the same security.

The model would build on existing experience with depository receipts , secondary listings and cross-border securities.

“We’re talking about consolidation. We’re talking about integration. We’re talking about aggregation to ensure that Botswana becomes a window into the vast marketplace that Southern Africa provides,” Tapfum aneyi said.

What a Dangote listing could mean

For Botswana, the immediate attraction of a Dangote listing is access to a large and established African industrial company.

The country has a sizeable pool of institutional capital, particularly through pension funds with assets exceeding P200 billion , but domestic markets offer a more limited range of large investment opportunities.

A major secondary listing could therefore give local institutional investors another avenue for deploying capital while connecting Botswana's financia l market to a much larger African corporate.

It could also provide the BSE with a high-profile test of its ability to attract major foreign companies and connect them with investors beyond Botswana.

The broader ambition is not simply to bring Dangote to Ga borone, but to use the listing as evidence that Botswana can serve as a bridge between African companies and regional capital.

That is the more consequential proposition behind the campaign.

A successful Dangote listing would not, by itself, transform Bots wana's economy or its stock exchange. But it would provide a powerful demonstration that a relatively small market can play a larger role in mobilising and connecting African capital.

For the BSE, that may be the real prize.

The exchange is no longer simpl y seeking more companies for its board. It is trying to position Gaborone as part of the infrastructure through which African capital moves.