In most countries with organized securities markets, including South Africa, the equity market is much larger than the corporate bond market, however.<sup>63</sup> Equity listing tallies and market capitalizations for the second- and third-largest stock exchanges—Nigeria and Kenya—were 202 ($32.82 billion) and 52 ($11.38 billion), respectively, at end-2006, compared with corporate bond listing tallies of three ($128.13 million) and eight ($128.25 million), respectively. Total stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP was less than 33 percent in all of the focus countries except Kenya (61 percent), Nigeria (33 percent), and South Africa (295.5 percent). It was as low as 0.03 percent in Cameroon (with a single small listing).

Annual turnover ratios (the value of shares traded for the year divided by year-end market capitalization) are very low, except in South Africa—often only a few stocks are traded. Annual turnover ratios in 2006 were less than 10 percent in 9 of the 14 national and regional stock markets covered in this study, and less than 1 percent for stock exchanges in Cameroon, Mozambique, and Zambia. At 48.8 percent, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange had the highest turnover ratio by far among the focus countries, followed by Kenya’s at 14.6 percent. In contrast, most developed economy markets and some emerging economy markets had turnover ratios exceeding 100 percent. In 2006 Saudi Arabia had a turnover ratio of 288.4 percent, the highest worldwide (S&P 2007).

Although equity markets tend to be larger and somewhat more developed than bond markets across the focus countries, infrastructure companies have accounted for a smaller share of the market capitalization of many national stock exchanges than of the corresponding national bond markets. Seven of the 14 organized national and regional stock exchanges that operate in the focus countries (those of Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, and Cameroon) had no equity listings by infrastructure companies. Equity listings by companies operating in infrastructure sectors accounted for only 7.75 percent of the total market capitalization of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (table 5.7), versus 20.2 percent for South Africa’s Bond Exchange. The market capitalization of infrastructure companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, the second largest stock exchange, constituted a very tiny portion of total market capitalization (0.4 percent). On both the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the Nigerian Stock Exchange, infrastructure listings were mostly of companies providing civil engineering and construction services for transport infrastructure. Sudan’s stock exchange, the Khartoum Stock Exchange, had the highest share of market capitalization comprised of equity listings by infrastructure providers, at just below 50 percent as of end-2006. On the Khartoum Stock Exchange, this was nearly entirely comprised of a single large $2.3 billion issue by telecommunications company Sudan Telecom. West Africa’s regional exchange, the BRVM, had the next-highest share of infrastructure companies in overall market capitalization, at 47 percent as of end-2006. Infrastructure service providers listing shares on the BRVM cut across a range of subsectors—electricity generation, telecommunications, transport services, engineering and construction of roads, and water utilities—but an exceptionally large listing by a single telecoms company, Sonatel, accounted for 44 percent of market capitalization.

> 63 The size of South Africa’s corporate bond market vis-à-vis its equity market remains very small, estimated at 2–4 percent of the size of the equity market at year-end 2006, according to the Bond Exchange of South Africa.

55