By The East African Community (EAC) has reactivated its capital markets sub-committee to speed EAC capital markets integration ahead of a planned monetary union, the bloc said on Monday.
The sub-committee held its first formal meeting since 2019 from Sept. 15 to 17, according to a statement issued from the bloc’s headquarters in Arusha.
The move is meant to accelerate work on linking the region’s stock exchanges, regulators and securities depositories as Partner States prepare for the East African Monetary Union.
The three-day meeting brought together chief executives and senior technical representatives from securities exchanges, capital markets and securities regulators, and central securities depositories across the bloc, the statement said.
It followed a directive from the 18th Meeting of the Sectoral Council on Finance and Economic Affairs to resume the committee’s work and strengthen regional coordination, the EAC said. The sub-committee is part of the bloc’s Capital Markets, Insurance and Pensions Committee.
Dickson Ssembuya, director of research and market development at the Capital Markets Authority Uganda, chaired the meeting on behalf of the authority’s chief executive, Josephine Okui Ossiya.
Ssembuya said resuming the committee’s work was critical to advancing the integration agenda. “The last engagement of Chief Executives under this Sub-Committee was in 2019,” he said.
He said integration efforts had continued since then, but without the regular coordination and oversight the committee was created to provide.
The sub-committee endorsed updated terms of reference covering regulatory harmonisation, market development, new financial products and the linking of market infrastructure across EAC countries, Capital FM Kenya reported.
It also agreed to develop regional business requirements to guide a capital markets connectivity framework, which is expected to make cross-border transactions easier for investors. Members also reviewed progress on earlier integration initiatives linked to preparations for the East African Monetary Institute.
Capital markets are where companies and governments raise long-term funding by selling shares and bonds. Central securities depositories hold those securities electronically and settle trades.
The EAC wants to narrow differences between markets through common rules for cross-border listings and trading, wider use of regional financial products, and closer links between securities depositories and trading platforms.
The aim is to let an investor in Nairobi access securities in Kampala or Dar es Salaam, while allowing companies in smaller markets to tap a wider pool of regional capital.
About 110 companies are listed on the EAC’s four exchanges: 62 on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, 21 on the Dar es Salaam bourse, 18 on the Uganda Securities Exchange and nine on the Rwanda Stock Exchange. Based on those figures, the Nairobi exchange accounts for more than half of the listings.
The renewed push comes as the region’s economy is growing faster than the sub-Saharan African average. The EAC’s Monetary Affairs Committee projects regional growth of 5.2% this year, against 4.3% for sub-Saharan Africa.
The committee said in July that average headline inflation across the bloc fell to 6.7% in the 2025/2026 financial year from 9.6% a year earlier.
The same committee reviewed a revised roadmap toward the East African Monetary Union and the establishment of a single regional currency by 2031. The original monetary union protocol envisaged a single currency by 2024.
The committee, which met in Kampala, said convergence among Partner States remained uneven, and that none had met all four primary convergence criteria.
The bloc is also pursuing closer integration of payment systems and has begun diagnostic work on the proposed East African Monetary Institute, which is expected to precede the creation of a regional central bank.
