The Emergence of Africa’s Stock Markets

Abstract

Visions about the future of Africa vary from the apocalyptic to the hopelessly optimistic. If there is one country that seems to embody both the tremendous difficulties and the vast possibilities facing the continent, it surely must be Mozambique. By any measure, Mozambique is one of the world’s poorest countries: the average Mozambican’s income is just 60 US cents per day and more than two-thirds of the population live on less than a dollar a day. Most of the country still lacks even basic infrastructure, largely a result of centuries of Portuguese colonial under-investment followed by a generation of brutal civil war.