The national exchanges of East Africa also have a relatively high proportion of infrastructure providers among their equity listings—infrastructure companies accounted for 18 percent, 25 percent, and 33 percent, respectively, of the markets capitalization of the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan stock exchanges at the end of 2006. Kenya Airways’ primary listing on the Nairobi Stock Exchange and secondary listings on Uganda and Tanzania’s exchanges in 2001–02 have been credited with boosting both the market capitalization and trading volume of the latter two exchanges. Infrastructure service providers’ corporate bonds, however, accounted for a much higher share of total outstanding corporate bonds on the BRVM, the Nairobi Stock Exchange, and the Uganda Stock Exchange—at 97 percent, 51 percent, and 58 percent, respectively.<sup>64</sup> The telecommunications sector’s $4.1 billion in total equity issues outstanding was the most of any infrastructure sector (table 5.8). Two large issues by Senegal’s Sonatel on the BRVM and Sudan’s Sudan Telecom on the Khartoum Stock Exchange constituted 99.96 percent of that sum.

The transport sector ranked second in terms of equity financing by infrastructure sectors. Equity issues for transport infrastructure accounted for 3.6 percent ($2.3 billion) of all corporate equity issues outstanding in these markets at end-2006, however, which was a smaller portion of total issues compared with corporate bond markets but a larger amount in absolute terms (table 5.9). The vast majority of the total was issued by firms providing transport services, rather than actual transport construction projects. Nearly all of the $63.7 million of equity issues for transport construction was for road construction (mainly issued by Nigerian firms). Five countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania) were the domicile of all equity issues outstanding in the transport infrastructure sector. Electricity generation was the third-ranking infrastructure sector in terms of the value of equity issues outstanding— 95 percent of the share value in question was issued by Kenya’s electricity utilities, Kenya Power & Lighting, and KenGen.

Cross-border listings by African firms and cross-border investment, while falling short of regionally integrating national exchanges, could help overcome impediments of small size, illiquidity, and inadequate market infrastructure and facilitate the ability of companies and governments to raise financing for infrastructural development. Cross-border listings and investment could improve firms’ ability to mobilize funds for expansion and provide for diversification of sources of capital. The eightmember-country BRVM was established with this objective in mind. But although infrastructure companies have listed shares, overall listings, market capitalization, and trading activity remain low. In addition to the Kenya Airways cross-listing in East Africa, two other cross-border listings have been made on the three national exchanges in the East African Community. Some other notable debut crossborder listings include those of Ecobank in West Africa on the BRVM, the Ghana Stock Exchange, and the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

> 64 For the BRVM, this statistic is based only on corporate bonds outstanding by companies domiciled in those BRVM member countries included in the diagnostic (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Senegal).

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