Hedera Welcomes Nairobi Securities Exchange to Governing Council, Accelerating Securities Tokenization in Africa

• The Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) has joined the Hedera Governing Council to advance tokenization in Kenya’s capital markets, a significant move for both the local economy and the broader African financial landscape. 
• By joining the Hedera Council, the NSE will provide African investors with access to innovative digital assets and financial products.

Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), the best-performing market in Africa has joined the decentralized Hedera Governing Council, the organization behind Hedera Hashgraph, in a bid to expedite the adoption of tokenized securities within Kenya’s capital markets. As the 32nd member of the Hedera Council, the NSE joins a global network that includes companies like Google, IBM, and LG, which oversee Hedera’s governance.

According to the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) ranking, the NSE earned the title of Africa’s top-performing market in the first nine months of 2024. This displays the strong trust investors have in it. Furthermore, this reward showcases how the NSE is the cornerstone of prosperity to Kenya’s economic progress.

Here’s How Hedera Will Transform Digital Finance in Africa

As a key part of this alliance, the NSE brings digital and tokenized assets directly into the mainstream. For context, Tokenization is the process of converting real assets like stocks, bonds, and commodities into digital tokens on a blockchain. This collaboration also aims to modernize Africa’s financial markets by using Hedera’s advanced Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Hedera’s DLT allows multiple members to maintain their own identical copy of a shared ledger.

Through Hedera’s Hashgraph Consensus, created by Leemon Baird, co-founder and chief scientist of Hedera the NSE will have several benefits. This includes Secure, real-time, and low-cost payment settlement allowing users to transact using their preferred cryptocurrency. Additionally, it offers decentralized, scalable, and publicly verifiable data logs ensuring that all transactions and activities can be audited and verified without relying on a central authority.

The mechanism allows the network to achieve an impressive throughput of over 10,000 transactions per second. This is achieved by utilizing a unique algorithm that emphasizes speed and efficiency. 

Hedera is continually expanding its ecosystem, offering a range of applications and developer tools. Recently, Hedera integrated LayerZero (ZRO), a technology that enables applications to move data across blockchains, into its network to enhance the Hedera Token Service (HTS). This will significantly boost the NSE’s offerings by making the exchange a hub for digital asset trading.

Bill Miller, Co-Chair of the Membership Committee for Hedera, highlighted in the report that the NSE possesses expertise and strong foundations in Africa. As one of the largest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya offers an opportunity to accelerate the adoption of digital assets. With a market capitalization of about $12.65 billion, daily transaction volumes exceeding $100 million, and 63 listed companies across 11 sectors, the NSE provides an ideal foundation for enhancing global capital markets.

Hedera’s advanced technology will enable the NSE to enhance global liquidity and improve access to financial services for African investors, while also strengthening its presence in the digital asset space.