Nigeria has proposed a regional capital-market passport that would allow approved issuers to raise funds across participating West African markets without applying separately in each country.
Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele outlined the proposal at the S&P Global Africa Summit in Lagos on Tuesday, November 10, as part of efforts to expand financing for infrastructure and economic growth.
The proposed arrangement would cover Ghana, Nigeria and the eight countries sharing the West African CFA franc: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo.
Nigeria is also advocating a common investor identification system to reduce repeated registration requirements when investors buy securities across borders.
Other proposals include connecting trading and payment systems to support settlement in local currencies, establishing a regional bond index and creating a facility to strengthen financing for cross-border infrastructure.
Oyedele said fragmented markets were limiting access to investment at the scale required for development. The measures remain proposals, rather than an operational regional passport.
The summit’s published programme placed capital-market development, sovereign debt and investment financing at the centre of its discussions on November 10 and 11.
S&P Global’s event briefing identified shallow markets, limited long-term local-currency instruments and weak secondary-market liquidity as barriers to funding. It also highlighted Ghana’s post-debt-restructuring recovery as an example of why resilient domestic markets matter for investor confidence and long-term financing.
Sources:
Reuters, November 10: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/nigeria-proposes-regional-bond-market-reforms-spur-cross-border-investments-2026-11-10/
