2020 will probably have a few dedicated chapters in history books due to the unprecedented situations we had to go through in so many areas of our lives, and this, at a global scale. But the performance of African equity markets during the final trading week of the year reflects investors’ optimism for a return to normalcy as vaccination campaigns are unfolding across the globe, and governments confirmed their intention to support economies.
African equities were mostly up the last week of 2020, with Zimbabwe and Nigeria confirming their spots as the continent’s top performers. Their benchmark indices jumped by 17.51% and 3.79% respectively during this 4-day trading week, capping an impressive year for both markets despite the challenging global environment. Markets in Uganda (+3.65%), Ivory Coast (+3.22%), and Malawi (+2.47%) complete the top 5.
Overall, for the year, most markets did not manage to fully recover from the global sell-off in March, with the notable exception of the ZSE and the NGSE. Of course, at the individual stock level, some industries such as telecom outperformed, but we will keep a high-level market view for now.
