Data published by Bloomberg on Monday showed that exchange-traded funds that buy emerging market stocks and bonds rose last week, marking the second straight week of inflows. Inflows to US-listed emerging market ETFs came in at US$206.7m in the week ending 19 August, thanks to strong inflows in EM bond ETFs, which rose by US$248.3m. Stock ETFs, meanwhile, contracted by US$41.5m last week, with the biggest outflows from Asia focused ETFs. Zooming in on Africa, the biggest inflows were into South African (US$22.3m) targeted ETFs, followed by Egypt (US$7.4m), Nigeria (US$5.5m), Ghana (US$2.8m) and Kenya (US$2.5m). While the headwinds facing African assets are acute, with the Fed expected to remain aggressive in its fight against inflation and inflation expectations, Africa is home to some of the highest yields in the world. Therefore, while African assets are viewed as extremely risky, the risk is more than compensated for by high yields. As such, we expected demand for African assets to remain relatively healthy.
