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ECMA Directive No. 1009/2024 operationalises the licensing and supervisory architecture for Ethiopia's capital markets that was outlined at the principle level in the parent Capital Market Proclamation No. 1248/2021 (the statute that created ECMA itself). The directive:
1. Securities exchange licensing: establishes the mandatory application process, minimum capital requirements, governance standards, and ongoing supervisory obligations for any entity seeking to operate a securities exchange in Ethiopia. ECMA subsequently used this framework to grant the Ethiopian Securities Exchange S.C. (ESX) the country's first-ever securities-exchange licence — enabling the ESX to commence listed-equity and fixed-income trading operations.
2. Derivatives exchange framework: the directive explicitly extends the licensing architecture to derivatives exchanges, providing the legal basis for commodity-derivatives trading. This is directly relevant to Ethiopia's dominant export complex — coffee, sesame, and pulses — where price-discovery and hedging infrastructure had been absent.
3. OTC market regulation: establishes a regulatory perimeter for the over-the-counter market, bringing inter-dealer and inter-institutional securities transactions within ECMA's supervisory remit for the first time.
4. Supervisory and enforcement architecture: defines ECMA's ongoing powers of inspection, suspension, and licence revocation vis-à-vis licensed exchanges and OTC operators — the operational law enforcement layer that the proclamation only framed at high level.
The directive is the second of a multi-layer capital-markets architecture stack. The parent layer is Proclamation No. 1248/2021 (creating ECMA); this directive provides the licensing regime; Directive No. 1030/2024 (Public Offering and Trading of Securities) provides the issuance and secondary-trading rules for the instruments traded on the licensed exchange.
this directive directly enabled ESX to open for trading. ESX commenced operations in 2024-2025 with an initial focus on government securities and state-enterprise equities prior to broader private-sector listings.
venue through which non-resident portfolio capital can access listed Ethiopian equities and debt instruments, alongside the banking-sector FDI opening under Proclamation 1360/2025.
the legal basis for a coffee and agricultural commodities derivatives market, potentially replacing or supplementing the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) price-discovery function for export crops.
(Rwanda RSE, Botswana BSE, Mozambique MSE) and represents the largest pre-frontier capital-markets opening of 2024-2025 by domestic-economy GDP scale among sub-Saharan African emerging markets.
alongside the 2024-12-17-ethiopia-banking-business-proclamation-1360-2025 banking-sector liberalisation — together they provide the financing and trading infrastructure for Ethiopia's broader economic opening.
portfolio institutions to hold listed ET equities directly (currently subject to restrictions under the Investment Proclamation).
uptake by Ethiopian diaspora investment vehicles.
market or remain an adjunct to ECX spot-price operations.
licensing directive — the two together form the full exchange-operating rulebook.