- African stocks are losing more money for investors than their frontier-market peers, as Kenyan and Nigerian equities languish in bear markets on concern slower economic growth will dent corporate earnings.
- The sub-Saharan nations led declines over the past week among 25 countries on theMSCI Frontier Markets Index, which fell 4.2 percent through Wednesday amid a rout in global assets spurred by evidence that growth in China’s economy is slowing. Kenyan equities, including Vodafone Plc’s Nairobi-based unit Safaricom Ltd. and Diageo Plc’sEast African Breweries Ltd., dropped an average 7.8 percent, while securities traded in Lagos, such as PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc and Union Bank Nigeria Plc, slid 6.6 percent.
- Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and oil producer, is struggling to cope with oil prices near six-year lows, while a delay by President Muhammadu Buhari in naming his cabinet since taking power in May is deterring investors seeking direction on economic policy. In Kenya, growth is slowing as the country’s $1 billion-a-year tourism industry contracts following a spate of attacks by Islamist militants and a drought cuts tea crops, hurting the East African nation’s largest sources of foreign exchange.
“When you look at African countries and their economies this year, they’re under a lot of pressure because of very low commodity prices,” Isaac Matshego, an economist at Nedbank Group Ltd. in Johannesburg, said by phone on Thursday. “It’s expected generally that economic growth is going to be weak and in a weak growth environment you’ll have corporate growth earnings under pressure too.”
