When an African business lists on a stock exchange, who gets the chance to own a share of it? A listing may bring the company within reach of investors at home while leaving a pension fund elsewhere on the continent with few practical ways to buy in. That distance between an investment opportunity and the people whose savings could finance it is where SecondSTAX has chosen to work.
SecondSTAX’s partnership with AfroTalks reflects an ongoing commitment to promoting African businesses and creating pathways for capital to reach innovative enterprises and impactful ideas. This shared vision took centre stage at AfroTalks Nairobi 2026, where Duke E.N.L. Lartey, SecondSTAX’s co-founder and chief operating officer, joined the fintech panel “Owning the Financial Sector.” His participation connected the conference’s focus on sovereignty, ownership and capital with the practical work of making African investment opportunities more accessible. According to SecondSTAX, its platform processed close to four million shares in the recent Dangote Petroleum Refinery IPO and is actively used by investors around the world to purchase stocks in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. These developments bring a central ambition of the partnership into focus, enabling African businesses to attract the capital they need to grow while opening more opportunities for investors to participate in the continent’s economic future.
What it takes to own a share across a border
SecondSTAX builds investment infrastructure that connects global and pan-African investors with African-issued securities. Shares and bonds serve different purposes here. A shareholder owns part of a business and can participate in its gains and losses. A bondholder lends money to an issuer in return for agreed payments. Making both kinds of investment more accessible gives institutions a wider choice about how they put capital to work.
Consider a Ghanaian pension fund interested in a company listed in Kenya. The fund may have studied the business and concluded that its shares suit the fund’s investment policy. Its managers still need a way to place an order through an authorised broker, settle the transaction and account for the shares on behalf of pension contributors. A sound investment decision can stall at any one of those steps. The work of connecting markets lies in making that journey practical while respecting the rules of each country.
According to Lartey’s AfroTalks speaker profile, SecondSTAX secured licences in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya within twelve months and works with institutional partners in those markets. That approach gives local financial institutions a role in connecting their markets to one another. It also explains why the company’s work matters to people who may never use a trading platform themselves. When a pension fund invests, it is acting on behalf of the workers whose contributions it manages.
Whose capital helps shape African businesses?
For AfroTalks, the ownership question runs in both directions. African businesses want access to a wider pool of investors. African investors also need access to businesses beyond their own borders. A system that brings overseas capital into an African exchange addresses the first ambition. Building routes between African exchanges also serves the second. SecondSTAX’s focus on both global and pan-African investors puts these two ambitions alongside each other.
For a listed business, a wider investor base can make it easier to find buyers when shareholders want to sell. A purchase of existing shares transfers ownership between investors. When the business later issues new shares or bonds to raise money, a broader pool of investors familiar with it can matter in a different way. The potential benefit extends beyond a single trade to the company’s ability to seek capital for its next stage of growth.
Access also raises a question of scale. Lartey’s conference profile describes a mobile-money network extending to more than 28 million accounts. That figure describes the network’s reach. How many people ultimately invest will depend on the products available to them, their cost, the information customers receive and the protections they can rely on. Those are meaningful tests of whether a financial system that connects institutions can also serve ordinary savers.
The questions that brought AfroTalks to Nairobi
AfroTalks began in Accra with a single word, “How.” How did Africa arrive at its present circumstances, and who gets to tell that story? Lagos followed with “Matrix,” an exploration of how Africans navigate the systems they inherited. In Kigali, the question turned to integration. What would it take for Africans to work across borders and build institutions together?
Nairobi brought ownership and sovereignty into that conversation. Once African markets are connected, who can invest in them, who sets the terms and who benefits from their growth? SecondSTAX’s work gives that question a practical meaning. For workers in Ghana whose pension fund sees an opportunity in Kenya, the ability to hold a stake in a Kenyan business is one way to share in growth beyond their own country.
AfroTalks intends to host its next gathering in Addis Ababa on the sidelines of AU Day, which falls on 25 May. Its aim is to bring African leaders into the same room as young people from across the continent. Leaders would speak directly to them about the issues Africa faces, the progress the continent and the African Union have made so far, and the work that remains.
For a young delegate, progress can be a practical question. Is it easier to build a business across two African countries, invest in a neighbouring economy or influence the institutions that shape those choices? AfroTalks envisions Addis Ababa as a place where young Africans can put such questions to their leaders and hear the answers first-hand.
