The Capital Markets Team Africa has held the Financial Sector Deepening (FSD), Biennial Sustainable Capital Markets Conference in Kenya, with an aim to showcase FSD Africa’s approach to developing sustainable capital markets in Africa and provide a platform for knowledge sharing on capital market development for Africa’s financial leaders, policy makers and stakeholders.
The two-day symposium brings together Africa’s leading industrialists to engage in discussions and insights on domestic capital mobilization, highlighting FSD Africa’s innovative approaches and impactful interventions in the region’s capital markets.
Cabinet Secretary (CS) for the National Treasury and Economic Planning, John Mbadi, noted that despite the social unrest experienced in 2024 in the First and Second Quarter of the year, Kenya witnessed macroeconomic stability, as the country recorded above average growth of 5 and 4.6 percent respectively, which projected an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in Africa at 3 percent.
In a speech read on his behalf by Mr. Albert Mwenda, Acting Director General of the Budget, Fiscal and Economic Affairs Directorate, at the National Treasury, Mbadi revealed that the country’s financial challenge is in implementing the nationally determined contributions, which targets to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent by 2030, relative to the business as usual scenario as the total cost for implementing the necessary adaptation and mitigation measures under the nationally determined contribution is estimated.
The CS added that the interest rates for Kenya have also started to stabilize in line with the global trends and the Central Bank rate in October, 2024 has also been lowered from 12.35 percent to 12 percent, giving an indication of the government’s efforts to reduce interest rates on Treasury Bills and trade reforms.
“The fiscal deficit as at the end of the Financial Year 2023-2024 was 5.6 percent of GDP. We, however, see that going down, as this year we are at 6.6 percent of GDP but we will return the cap at 5.6 percent as the debt burden is high at 65.5 percent and we would like this to come down to the level of debt anchor which is 55percent of GDP over the mid-year,” explained Mbadi.
Speaking at the event, Dr Evans Osano, Director Capital Markets, FSD Africa, pointed out that by 2050, Africa’s population will rise to about 2.5 billion people from 1.4 billion people and out of that, 740 million will be coming to the job market as the continent is urbanizing very quickly.
Osano emphasized that in 2024, the growth was at three percent and rose to four percent this year, attributing it to the Ukraine, Middle East and Sudan war, which are still ongoing.
Additionally, the Director mentioned that these wars have displaced a lot of people and the global economic recovery is still improving, especially in the US, but many places are still quite fragile, fortunately bringing inflation on interest rates that ultimately translates into an economic crisis.
“Over the last two years 1 billion Africans have fallen basically below the poverty line which is defined as two dollars and fifteen cents per day, therefore, 64 billion Africans living below the poverty line have defined per capita incomes,” he highlighted.
By Rebecca Kibegwa
