Online Retail Forex: Where Does Africa Stand?

Exchange of foreign currencies for international trading is not new to Africa. However, broker-powered online retail forex trading has only emerged recently.

From Egypt in North Africa to South Africa, and from Nigeria in Western Africa to Kenya in Eastern Africa, the online forex industry is rising gradually across more than 30 million square kilometres in this continent of 54 countries.

According to estimates, presently, Africa has about 1.3 million forex traders in total, with Nigeria and South Africa, the continent’s two largest economies, accounting for about 390,000.

The increasing popularity of online forex trading is observable among Africa’s high youthful populations who now have access to smartphones and enjoy mobile broadband internet.

South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Tanzania, Namibia and Angola boast the highest numbers of beginner investors who trade forex and contracts for difference (CFDs) alongside cryptocurrencies.

The European Securities & Markets Authority (ESMA) in 2018 rolled out regulations limiting the leverage and restricting the marketing of CFDs in Europe, citing financial risks to the retail investors. Similar restrictions have been imposed by the UK’s FCA & the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASCIC).

As a result, the growth in Africa’s nascent online retail forex industry is being led by foreign brokerage firms, mostly from Europe, that are diversifying their portfolios into new markets in Africa as regulations tighten up at home.

Some of the international forex brokers in Africa include Tickmill, Exness, BDSWISS, IC Markets and FP Markets.

Like any other emerging industry, Africa’s online retail forex markets have its own share of challenges, even as certain trends have defined the industry in the past.

What are these challenges? What are these trends? And what is the way forward? Finance Magnates takes a surgical knife-dive into Africa’s emerging online retail FX industry.

Southern Africa and the FCSA

South Africa is Africa’s largest player in the online forex scene. The country's currency, the South African Rand, is the most traded currency in Africa. Rand is also the 18th most traded currency in the world. The country boasts of around 190,000 daily FX traders and over 1000 financial entities.

According to BusinessTech, a top business news site in South Africa, South Africa’s forex trading volumes including CFDs and spot trading totalled about $2.21 billion per day with a total daily foreign exchange volume of $20.37 billion for all FX instruments in 2019.

The country’s leading position in the continent has been attributed to the strong regulatory framework provided by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA). The FSCA, formed in 2018, is the successor to the country’s Financial Service Board of 2004 which regulated the country’s forex industry until FSCA’s emergence.

Although FCSA’s framework is not yet as strong as those of foreign regulators, it is the oldest and most respected regulator on the continent. Additionally, it regulates some of the foreign brokers in Africa.

As a result, many foreign brokerage firms are seeking to obtain an FCSA license so as to penetrate the African market. It has been said that the interest in South Africa is because the country has no restrictions on the use of leverage in CFDs and FX trading.

However, apart from South Africa, Namibia is another South African country with an increasing number of active online forex retail traders.

Although Namibia has strict rules that allow currency exchange only through authorized dealers, bureaus and commercial enterprises, it has no clear guidelines with regard to online forex trading.

Tradefx.co.za, a South African forex review website, reports that the Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority (NAMFISA) has made no effort to compel foreign brokers to obtain local supervision. Therefore, forex brokers in Namibia remain largely unregulated.

Western Africa and Nigeria’s Unregulated Industry

Unlike South Africa, online forex retail trading is unregulated in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Nonetheless, Nigeria is the second largest retail FX market in Africa.

Although estimates say Nigeria has 10,000 forex traders more than South Africa, Nigeria with about $315m in daily FX trading volume is greatly behind South Africa.

Like the rest of the continent, the Nigerian online retail forex trading is dominated by foreign brokers regulated by commissions such as South Africa’s FSCA, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, the Cyprus Security and Exchange Commission (CySEC) and the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (FSA), among others.

In 2018, the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) warned citizens of the country against engaging in leveraged online retail forex trading solicited by so-called investors.

“Until a framework for regulation of online retail forex trading is developed by the SEC, any person participating or engaged in such investment activity does so at his or her own risk,” the SEC Nigeria said in a statement.

However, a worrisome trend in the Nigerian online forex trading industry is the increasing rate of so-called ‘forex scams’ being perpetrated by supposed chief executives fleecing unsuspecting investors of billions of naira.

In Ghana, online forex trading is common. There are even trading schools such as the Oak Forex Academy that teach people how to trade, from beginner to advanced classes.

Although trading is not as widespread in Côte d'Ivoire as it is in Nigeria, traders in the country also have access to multiple foreign brokers. Some of the top-rated brokers in the Ivory Coast are eToro, Exness, FP Markets and IC Markets.

Eastern African and Kenya’s Fledging CMA

Kenya in East Africa comes in third place as the largest online forex industry in Africa with its 50,000 active forex traders. Its daily averages for FX volume are estimated to be about $192 million.

In 2017, the Kenyan government introduced the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) to regulate forex brokers in the country. However, because the CMA is relatively new, it is yet to standardize its regulatory approach. As a result, many brokers in the country are not yet registered.

In Zimbabwe, there is an estimated 45,000 retail forex traders. Young people in the East African country are turning to the forex industry to make a living as the country’s unemployment rates climb amidst hyperinflation and an unstable domestic currency.

According to a report by Rest of World, Zimbabwe’s forex trading is done under the table as commercial banks have refused to open Visa/MasterCard accounts for any known online forex trader.

This is said to be the result of a restriction placed by the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Yet, young people in the South-East African country have found a way around it. Many use digital wallets to route their profit, for instance.

Moreover, Tanzania is among the countries with a growing number of online retail forex traders in East Africa. However, like Nigeria, online forex trading in Tanzania is unregulated. Nonetheless, the Central Bank of Tanzania has been cracking down on foreign exchange bureaus breakings its rules on currency exchange rates.

FX in Northern and Central Africa

Young Egyptians are not left out of the shift towards retail forex trading. The ability to trade on smartphones, like everywhere else on the continent, is driving young people to trade. In Egypt, the most-traded forex currency pair is the US dollar and the Egyptian Pound.

However, forex trading is not usually welcomed in African countries governed by strict Sharia laws, such as Egypt and Algeria, FXEmpire says.

Benzinga also reports that forex is restricted by certain local laws and regulations in Egypt. Some of the imposed restrictions may include a maximum trade amount and maximum balance in your trading account, the outlet said.

Additionally, the Egyptian government established the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) in 2009 to supervise and regulate non-banking financial market actors including those in the capital, futures exchanges, insurance, mortgage and forex industries.

The New Trends Defining Africa’s FX Industry

Across continental Africa, young people are joining the forex game.

“Over the past two years, we have observed a substantial increase in crypto and forex trading, especially amongst a younger generation of traders aged between 18 to 25 years,” Christoforos Panagiotou, the Regional Manager for Africa at Tickmill, told Finance Magnates. Tickmill is a UK-based international forex broker.

“Forex trading is estimated to have increased overall by 450% which is the biggest percentage growth during the last decades,” Panagiotou added.

Brian Myers, the CEO of Equiti Brokerage/Equiti Africa, sees a really strong trend in the emergence of more female traders in Africa.

“For context, a few years ago, just 9% of our Kenya traders were female. This number is over 25% now,” Myers says in a Finance Magnates interview.

Beyond the popular countries of Africa, Exness, an international broker registered in Seychelles, sees a rising interest in online forex trading from less known African countries.

"Customers from the more advanced and industrialized Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries still make up the bulk of our customer base in Africa. But, what has been very noticeable of late is how rapidly the demand for our services is spreading into some of the lesser-known countries of Africa, along with the understanding of financial markets and the desire to participate in them," Paul Margarites, Exness' Regional Director in Sub Saharan Africa, told Finance Magnates in an interview.

"Now they are asking the right questions, for example, the need for a closer server, better and faster payment systems, localized support executives, and even physical meetups with their account managers; all of which are catered for by Exness," Margarites added.

Seychelles-based CFD and forex broker, Radex Markets, whose major clientele in Africa are from South Africa and Nigeria, sees the blossoming of forex-related businesses in Africa as a major trend driving the industry.

“[We are] seeing a lot of Clubhouse gatherings from trader’s communities and [the] growing amount of services, such as signal providers, trading academies, fund managers, to many other tech-savvy trading gurus which indicate the tremendous growth of the markets across Africa,” Henry Huang, Radex Markets’ Marketing & Business Development Director, said in a Finance Magnates interview.

According to a survey conducted by forex education platform, Forexsuggest, some of the regulated forex brokers in Africa recorded 100%+ growth in 2020, despite the economic downtrend precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brokers such as Exness, XM.com, AvaTrade, CM Trading and Tickmill, said they hit median growth rates of about 21% during the pandemic period.

Additionally, Margarites pointed out to Finance Magnates that the Exness Group, an international retail FX group of brokers, surpassed the $1trillion monthly trading volume mark for the first time in October 2021 and surpassed the $2 trillion mark in March 2022.

"This would not have been possible without the rapid and broad-based growth that we saw coming out of the Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) region, in addition to many other markets," Margarites stated.

On his part, Huang believes one of the many reasons for the spike in forex trading across Africa is the pandemic-induced shutdown which made people get used to investing and creating businesses online.

“Social media has played a significant role in providing insights to market data, technical outlooks and educational material,” Panagiotou also chipped in.

Additionally, Equiti believes its practice of grooming local teams in Africa rather than outsourcing its operations is a major factor contributing to its success in the continent.

“We also work hard with local authorities to install strong and protective regulations, for example, we were the first licensed online non-dealing broker in Kenya, regulated by the Central Markets Authority,” Myers pointed out. “This has paid dividends, as we are acknowledged as a global broker but with a true authentic local culture.”

Matters Arising

While young people are leading Africa’s rising online retail forex scene, insufficient knowledge of the nitty-gritty of trading is “a huge challenge.”

Equiti says reversing this knowledge gap is at the core of its mission in Africa.

Myers added, “The Standard & Poor’s Global Financial Literacy Survey 2019 declared literacy rates across Africa to be low compared to Europe, for example, 38% in Kenya, 26% in Nigeria.

“This is compared to an average 60-70% in European countries. With lower financial literacy rates and a surge of interest in the financial markets, it creates an atmosphere ripe for scams and unscrupulous players."

Panagiotou also reiterated this point: “The main challenges we faced were to inform traders about the importance of trading with a regulated broker that adheres to strict policies.

"Also, certain clients were not familiar with advanced and sophisticated trading technologies and were interested in having access to any trading platform, no matter the cost or efficiency,” Panagiotou further noted.

On his part, Exness' Margarites described Africa, and notably Sub-Saharan Africa, as a vast region filled with challenges and opportunities.

"Travel between countries, even neighboring ones, is not straightforward, and neither is communication, given the complexities of language and dialects. Infrastructure like education, partner networks and adequate regulations, or the lack thereof, can at times be a challenge and potentially slow down the momentum," Margarites added.

A Rising Financial Revolution?

Despite the volatile nature of online forex trading, Africa continues to remain a destination point for foreign brokers who are setting up physical offices in the continent to further deepen their ties with African traders.

With young people at the centre of this surge, there are high hopes the practice will only continue to become more widespread or mainstream.

“At the beginning of 2021, we started the Financial Literacy Revolution. This is a commitment by us to educate and improve financial literacy for millions across the continent,” Myers told Finance Magnates, speaking on Equiti Africa’s plan for the continent.

“We have been relentless in this mission, holding hundreds of workshops, taking virtual road shows to universities, hosting podcasts, radio and T.V trading education sent daily to our clients. This is a massive mission and one that we all enjoy.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: This analysis is part of a series of Finance Magnates articles dissecting the latest trends in the online retail forex industries around the world. You can also read about developments in the retail forex scenes in the United Kingdom, North America, Australia, and Latin America by following the links.