For most of its 72-year history, the Nairobi Securities Exchange has been a predictable place. Banks. Telecoms. Brewers. Maybe a cement company. The kind of companies that pay dividends, report quarterly earnings like clockwork, and whose share prices move slowly enough that pensioners can sleep at night. Equity Group. Safaricom. East African Breweries. British American Tobacco. These are the anchors of the NSE — blue-chip, profitable, and utterly unsuited to the risk-reward profiles of venture-backed tech startups.
Which is exactly why, as Nairobi solidified its reputation as East Africa’s tech capital over the past decade, almost none of that innovation showed up on the NSE. Not M-Pesa, which revolutionized mobile money globally but remains buried inside Safaricom’s balance sheet. Not Twiga Foods, which raised tens of millions in venture capital. Not Sendy, or Kopo Kopo, or Sky.Garden, or any of the hundreds of startups that have built products, raised money, and scaled operations out of Nairobi.
The NSE, despite sitting at the geographic heart of Africa’s most celebrated startup hub, has been almost completely absent from the tech story.
That’s about to change — or at least, the NSE wants it to.
Speaking at an Enza Capital session during the opening bell ceremony on the sidelines of Africa Tech Summit on February 12, NSE Chief Listing Officer Gift Kori announced that the exchange is actively exploring the creation of a dedicated technology board designed specifically for venture-backed, high-growth startups. The new segment would sit under the NSE’s existing market structure but would be tailored to the unique characteristics of early-stage tech companies: pre-profitability, rapid growth, non-traditional valuation models, and investor bases dominated by VCs and PE funds rather than retail shareholders.
“We’ve always had this market perception that the NSE, particularly, is for blue chips,” Kori said. “That only the very big companies can come here to raise capital. That’s something we are deliberately trying to change.”
The announcement is significant. But whether it’s visionary or a decade too late depends entirely on whether African startups — which have spent years structuring themselves for offshore exits — can be convinced to come home.
The Regulatory Opening: Finally, Room to Experiment
The NSE’s tech board ambitions aren’t just rhetoric. They’re enabled by recent regulatory reforms that give the exchange significantly more flexibility to design sector-specific listing frameworks.
Historically, the NSE operated with two main segments: the Main Investment Market for large, established companies, and the Growth Enterprise Market Segment (GEMS) for SMEs. Both had rigid listing requirements — minimum paid-up capital, profitability thresholds, audited financial statements — that made them inaccessible to most tech startups. A company burning cash to acquire users, or reinvesting all revenue into R&D, simply didn’t fit the mould.
New regulatory changes now allow the NSE to create sub-boards under those two main segments, tailored to specific sectors. “That is the icing on the cake,” Kori said. “The regulation allows the NSE to create boards under these two main boards, in particular for very specific sectors.”
That flexibility is critical. It means the NSE can, in theory, design a tech board with lighter profitability requirements, alternative valuation frameworks (revenue multiples rather than P/E ratios), and governance structures that accommodate venture capital board seats and founder control mechanisms. It means the exchange can create a pathway for companies that are growing fast but not yet profitable — exactly the profile of most venture-backed African startups.
The question is whether flexibility alone is enough.
The Painful Precedent: Nigeria’s Three-Year Tech Board Drought
If the NSE wants to understand the risks of launching a tech board that nobody uses, it only needs to look west.
In 2022, the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) launched its own Technology Board with similar ambitions: attract high-growth startups, provide local exit routes, deepen capital markets. The board was positioned as a cornerstone of Nigeria’s strategy to keep tech value onshore, offering flexible listing requirements, lighter reporting thresholds, and eligibility pathways for companies with strong revenue potential but limited profitability.
Three years later, the NGX Technology Board has recorded zero IPOs. Not one. Despite Nigeria being home to over 3,000 startups, multiple unicorns including Moniepoint and Flutterwave, and over $1.18 billion in venture capital funding in 2024, not a single venture-backed tech company has listed on the local exchange.
A November 2025 report by TLP Advisory titled “Rethinking Funding & Exits: Nigeria’s Missing IPOs and the NGX” identified the structural reasons. First, awareness: 53% of founders lack sufficient awareness of the NGX listing process, despite the board’s existence. Second, currency mismatch: 76.5% of funded startups raise capital in US dollars but earn revenue in naira, creating a fundamental misalignment that makes a naira-denominated listing unattractive to dollar-seeking investors. Third, liquidity concerns: Nigeria’s capital markets are shallow compared to NASDAQ or the London Stock Exchange, raising doubts about whether shareholders could trade shares easily post-listing.
The result? Founders overwhelmingly prefer acquisition exits (45.8%) over IPOs (20.8%), and when they do consider going public, they look abroad. Dolapo Morgan of Ventures Platform confirmed that VCs “never factor in an IPO locally, viewing it as a highly improbable one-in-a-hundred opportunity.”
Kenya’s market dynamics are different — the shilling is more stable than the naira, regulatory predictability is stronger, and the NSE has deeper institutional participation. But the structural headwinds are similar. Most Kenyan startups raise capital in dollars. Most incorporate offshore in Delaware or London for legal clarity and investor confidence. Most build cap tables dominated by international VCs who expect dollar-denominated exits. And most, when they reach scale, look to M&A or offshore listings rather than local public markets.
The One Counter-Example: Johannesburg’s Fintech Bet
If Nigeria represents the cautionary tale, South Africa represents the best-case scenario.
The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has the most developed tech and fintech listing pipeline in sub-Saharan Africa. In November 2025 alone, the JSE saw two notable tech IPOs: Optasia, an AI-powered fintech focused on credit-scoring and lending, which debuted with a market capitalisation of ZAR 23.9 billion ($1.28 billion), and Cell C, a mobile operator that went public after completing a multi-year transformation strategy.
That’s two tech IPOs in one month. The NSE hasn’t had a significant tech-related listing since Safaricom in 2008 — nearly 18 years ago.
Why has the JSE succeeded where the NGX has failed? Several factors converge. First, market depth: the JSE is Africa’s largest and most liquid exchange, with a market capitalization exceeding $1 trillion. That liquidity means institutional investors can buy and sell large blocks of shares without crashing the price — a critical concern for VCs looking to exit. Second, regulatory sophistication: South Africa’s financial regulation is modeled on UK and EU frameworks, giving international investors confidence. Third, anchor investors: firms like FirstRand, which acquired a 20.1% stake in Optasia pre-IPO, provide institutional ballast that stabilizes pricing and signals confidence.
But even the JSE faces headwinds. The exchange has seen more delistings than listings in recent years — around 12 delistings versus just three new listings over the past two years. The cost of going public in South Africa exceeds $200,000, which is prohibitive for most startups. And South African tech companies, like their Kenyan and Nigerian counterparts, still overwhelmingly prefer M&A or offshore listings when they reach scale.
Andela, the tech talent accelerator that started in Nigeria, incorporated in the US and raised over $180 million before hitting unicorn status. Yoco, the South African fintech, raised $83 million in its Series C and continues to expand privately. The pattern holds: most African tech companies that reach significant scale either get acquired or stay private.
What Would Make the NSE Tech Board Work?
If the NSE is serious about attracting venture-backed startups, it needs to solve problems that go beyond regulatory flexibility. Here’s what would actually move the needle.
First, dual-currency listings. Allow companies to list in both Kenyan shillings and US dollars, giving investors optionality and reducing currency risk. The JSE already allows rand/dollar dual listings. If the NSE doesn’t offer similar flexibility, startups raising dollar capital will continue to look elsewhere.
Second, anchor institutional commitments. Get Kenyan pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth pools to commit to allocating a portion of their portfolios to tech listings. Without institutional buy-in, the only buyers will be retail investors who don’t understand tech business models and won’t provide the liquidity that VCs need to exit.
Third, cross-listing partnerships. Build formal cross-listing agreements with NASDAQ, AIM (London), or the JSE so that companies can list on the NSE and simultaneously access international liquidity. Cash Plus, Morocco’s first fintech IPO, listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange in November 2025 and is exploring cross-listing options. That’s the model.
Fourth, founder education and awareness. If 53% of Nigerian founders don’t understand how their local exchange works, it’s safe to assume Kenyan founders face similar knowledge gaps. The NSE needs to run roadshows, publish clear playbooks, and showcase case studies of successful tech listings. Founders need to see the pathway, not just hear about it in theory.
Fifth, regulatory incentives. Tax breaks for tech IPOs, expedited approvals, reduced listing fees for venture-backed companies — these are the kinds of carrots that change behavior. Nigeria’s Startup Act created a framework for this. Kenya could go further.
Sixth, market-making commitments. Guarantee liquidity by requiring designated market makers to provide continuous bid-ask quotes for tech stocks, preventing the illiquidity that makes investors nervous. Without liquidity guarantees, even a successful listing could turn into a stranded asset.
The Exit Landscape Is Shifting — But Not Toward Local IPOs
The broader context is that African startup exits are maturing, but they’re maturing toward M&A, not IPOs.
According to TC Insights data, Africa saw over 60 acquisitions in 2025 alone, a 59% year-on-year increase. Kenya and South Africa emerged as the continent’s top M&A hotspots, followed by Egypt, Nigeria, and Zambia. The exit pipeline is growing. But it’s growing through strategic acquisitions — Stripe buying Paystack for $200 million, BioNTech acquiring InstaDeep, Bitmama acquiring PayDay — not through public listings.
Public listings remain extremely rare. Since Jumia’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019, very few African tech companies have gone public. Fawry, Egypt’s digital payments company, listed on the Egyptian Exchange in 2019 and remains the continent’s clearest fintech IPO success story. Optasia’s 2025 JSE debut was celebrated precisely because it was so unusual.
A few companies have announced IPO intentions. Flutterwave has stated it will go public once it achieves profitability. Tizeti, a Nigerian ISP, announced plans to list on the NGX in 2024. ValU, Egypt’s buy-now-pay-later company, floated shares on the Egyptian Exchange. But these are exceptions, not trends.
The NSE’s tech board is launching into a market where the default exit strategy is acquisition, where the default capital structure is dollar-denominated, and where the default incorporation jurisdiction is Delaware or London. Changing those defaults will require more than a new listing segment. It will require a fundamental rewiring of how African startups think about exits.
The Verdict: A Tech Board Kenya Needs — But Startups May Not Want
Gift Kori is right that the NSE needs to shake off its blue-chip reputation. Kenya is the tech capital of East Africa. The exchange should reflect that. And regulatory flexibility to create sector-specific boards is a genuine step forward.
But the NSE is entering a market where the most comparable precedent — Nigeria’s three-year-old tech board — has attracted zero listings. Where the most successful precedent — the JSE — still sees more delistings than listings. And where the broader trend in African tech exits is toward M&A and offshore listings, not local IPOs.
If the NSE wants its tech board to succeed, it needs to do more than create regulatory flexibility. It needs to create economic incentives that make a Nairobi listing more attractive than a NASDAQ listing. It needs to create liquidity guarantees that make VCs confident they can exit at scale. It needs to create awareness and education so that founders actually understand the pathway. And it needs to create institutional buy-in so that there are real buyers waiting on the other side.
Without those pieces, the NSE tech board risks becoming another well-intentioned experiment that founders applaud in principle and ignore in practice. Kenya’s startups will keep raising dollars, incorporating offshore, and exiting through M&A. And the NSE will remain what it’s always been: a home for banks, telcos, and brewers, watching the tech revolution happen somewhere else.
The question isn’t whether the NSE should build a tech board. It should. The question is whether Kenya’s startups — and their dollar-holding, exit-focused investors — will actually use it.
Right now, the answer is far from clear.
