The John Small Lecture Annual Lecture – 4th Edition
Theme: The Architecture of African Capital: Pension Funds, Connected Exchanges and the Diaspora Investor
Established in memory of the late John Small, former CEO of the Association (1999–2020), the Annual Lecture is now in its fourth year. It offers a platform for dialogue among business leaders, asset managers, policy experts and Investors active in the region, honouring John’s legacy through meaningful exchange on key economic and strategic matters impacting the East Africa region.
Previous lectures: Leveraging Digital and Trade Finance to Accelerate AfCFTA, delivered by Dr James Mwangi – Group CEO of Equity Bank (2023); Hedging on Africa’s Competitiveness to Mobilise Capital, delivered by Dr.Reginald Kadzutu, Msc, PHD Financial Economist | Advent researcher in Monetary | Fiscal Policy| (2024); and Capital and Influence: Reimagining Our Region’s Development Ambitions in a Fragmented Business Landscape, delivered by Prof Victor Murinde (2025)Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC).
The 2026 theme
Africa’s pension funds hold approximately $700 billion, projected to reach $1 trillion within the decade, with less than 2 percent allocated to infrastructure against an annual gap of $130–170 billion. Diaspora capital adds a further layer: recorded remittances to the continent now exceed $100 billion a year, more than both official development assistance and foreign direct investment, yet around three quarters of that sum finances consumption rather than investment.
Philanthropic capital, growing across the continent, sits largely outside the region’s market structures. The African Development Bank’s 2025 Economic Outlook puts the wider prize plainly: with the right policies, Africa could raise an additional $1.43 trillion in domestic resources.
The capital is largely in place; the structures to channel it into African growth are not yet, though they are beginning to take shape. The African Exchanges Linkage Project has expanded to eleven exchanges, with full market integration targeted by 2030. Kenya’s Cabinet has backed a National Infrastructure Fund designed to pool privatisation proceeds alongside pension capital. Nigeria’s pension regulator is reviewing the cap on infrastructure allocation. And the continent’s markets face their first test at genuine scale: the potential of a single Nigerian listing, expected to be Africa’s largest ever at a valuation of $40–50 billion, potentially structured across multiple African exchanges, with pension funds from Lagos to Nairobi weighing allocations and diaspora investors seeking direct access.
Whether that transaction proves the model or exposes its limits, it marks the moment Africa’s capital markets are asked to carry institutional weight.
This is not a case for domestic capital in place of international capital. It is the reverse. Deeper home markets are the precondition for attracting global capital on competitive terms: the same architecture that lets a Nairobi pension fund invest with confidence is what gives a London or Gulf allocator the transparency, the liquidity and the exit they require.
The 2026 lecture examines what building that architecture requires the market depth, regulatory alignment, instruments and investor protections that turn the continent’s own savings into the foundation for financing its growth, and into the confidence that draws international capital in alongside it.
The Lecture’s Provocations
The lecturer will be invited to put four questions to the room, which the responding panel will take up.
First, Africa’s pension funds have mastered accumulation: $700 billion held, $1 trillion in sight. Yet they park that capital in government paper at home and look to London, New York and the Gulf to anchor the region’s landmark deals. This is not a shortage of capital; it is a shortage of the structures, and the confidence, to back our own markets. What would it take for African pension funds to lead to price, anchor and underwrite the region’s opportunities before foreign capital arrives to validate them?
Second, East Africa has cross-listed companies for two decades, from Nairobi to Kampala, Dar es Salaam and Kigali the continent’s proof of concept. Yet as the largest listing Africa has attempted prepares to span several exchanges, the ambition comes from a single bold issuer, not from the markets themselves. Why has the region’s head start not produced the depth, or the liquidity, to match and what must change for East Africa’s model to become the template through which African companies raise African capital?
Third, the diaspora commits some $100 billion a year to the region on trust alone, yet we treat it as a remittance channel rather than the investor class it is: educated, globally banked, and ready to hold government bonds, listed vehicles and real estate if we built them for it. The gap is structural, not sentimental our markets offer this investor a money-transfer product where they could offer a portfolio. Who builds that first: the exchanges, the regulators or the issuers?
Fourth, if we can build the plumbing to move capital across several exchanges for one flagship transaction, what stops the same rails from carrying the power, transport and housing the region’s own savers ultimately own and from carrying international capital into those same structures on terms the region sets? Is the hesitation technical, or a habit of waiting to be led?
Structure
Monday 12 October 2026, 2.00–5.00pm. A 20-minute keynote lecture delivered by [lecturer], followed by a moderated panel responding to the lecture’s argument, and a country spotlight session showcasing bankable opportunities across focus countries in East Africa. Discussion under Chatham House Rule.
The lecture is followed by a pre-AFSIC drinks reception at the House of Commons, co-hosted with the Westminster Africa Business Group, bringing lecture participants together with parliamentarians and investors ahead of AFSIC 2026 Investing in Africa.
The program provides opportunities for partnership: info@eaa-lon.co.uk