History of Angola's Capital Markets

BFA’s September 2025 IPO – 5x oversubscribed, generating a 132% gain from its offer price in early secondary trading – represented the culmination of a capital markets development journey that took nearly two decades from first announcement to functional equity exchange. That timeline, marked by false starts, commodity crashes, regulatory rewrites, and ultimately a wave of transformative listings, reveals both the structural ambition and the practical constraints that define Angola’s market-building effort.

2006: The announcement

Angola’s government first signaled its intention to establish a securities exchange in 2006, during the oil-fueled economic boom that followed the end of the civil war in 2002. GDP growth was averaging 15-20% annually, oil revenues were surging, and the banking sector was expanding rapidly from a low base. The Ministry of Finance commissioned feasibility studies, drawing on advisory support from Portuguese capital markets experts – a natural choice given the legal and linguistic heritage shared between the two countries.

At this stage, the concept was aspirational. Angola lacked the basic prerequisites: no securities legislation, no independent regulator, no central depository, no electronic trading infrastructure, and a banking system still dominated by state-owned institutions. The intervening years would be spent building each of these components.

2014: Formal establishment of BODIVA

After eight years of legislative drafting and institutional design, the Bolsa de Divida e Valores de Angola (BODIVA) was formally established in 2014 as a public company (sociedade anonima) headquartered in Luanda. The founding shareholders were the Angolan state (through the Ministry of Finance), the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA), and a consortium of commercial banks.

The same year saw the passage of the Codigo dos Valores Mobiliarios (Lei 22/15), Angola’s comprehensive securities code, which established the legal framework for securities issuance, trading, settlement, market conduct, and investor protection. The law also created the Comissao do Mercado de Capitais (CMC) as the independent securities regulator, separated from the BNA’s banking supervision function.

BODIVA’s initial mandate was narrow: create a regulated secondary market for government debt. Equity trading was not yet on the horizon. The priority was to develop a functioning platform where the Ministry of Finance’s growing issuance of Obrigacoes do Tesouro (Treasury Bonds) and Bilhetes do Tesouro (Treasury Bills) could be traded transparently, with price discovery replacing the opaque over-the-counter negotiations that had previously characterized Angola’s debt market.

2016: CEVAMA launch

The Central de Valores Mobiliarios de Angola (CEVAMA) commenced operations in 2016, providing the central securities depository infrastructure necessary for dematerialized securities trading. CEVAMA was established as a subsidiary of BODIVA, reflecting the vertically integrated model chosen for Angola’s market structure.

The launch of CEVAMA was a precondition for exchange trading. All securities traded on BODIVA would exist exclusively in electronic book-entry form – no physical certificates – and CEVAMA would serve as the definitive register of ownership, the settlement engine, and the custody account manager.

At launch, CEVAMA registered fewer than 660 custody accounts (contas de custodia), nearly all belonging to institutional investors – banks, insurance companies, and government entities. The transformation of this number over the following eight years – reaching 58,389 by year-end 2024, an expansion of 8,774% – is one of the most telling statistics in the Angola capital markets story.

2018: First trading in government bonds

BODIVA’s electronic trading platform, the Sistema Electronico de Transaccoes e Informacao de Cotacao (SETIC), went live for government bond trading in 2018. The initial instrument set comprised Obrigacoes do Tesouro in both kwanza-denominated (OT) and dollar-indexed (OT-X) series, plus Bilhetes do Tesouro across standard maturities.

The launch coincided with a difficult macroeconomic period. Oil prices had collapsed from above $100/barrel in 2014 to below $50, Angola was negotiating an IMF Extended Fund Facility (approved in December 2018 for $3.7 billion), the kwanza had been significantly devalued, and inflation was running above 20%. Government bond yields spiked accordingly, with some OT series offering double-digit returns – attracting the first wave of yield-seeking portfolio investors.

Trading volumes in the first year were modest but meaningful. The critical achievement was less about volume and more about the establishment of a transparent, rules-based secondary market where government debt could be priced, traded, and settled under CMC oversight. For the government, this meant more predictable borrowing costs and a visible yield curve. For investors, it meant liquidity – the ability to exit positions before maturity rather than holding to term.

2019: Regulatory reforms and Aviso 15/19

The BNA issued Aviso 15/19 in 2019, a directive that exempted capital markets transactions from the Contribuicao Especial sobre as Operacoes Cambiais (CEOC) – the foreign exchange operations tax. This was a pivotal reform for foreign investor access. The CEOC had imposed a levy on all currency conversions, making cross-border portfolio investment uneconomically expensive for many international participants.

By removing this friction, Aviso 15/19 signaled that Angola was serious about attracting portfolio flows – not just direct investment in the oil and mining sectors, but financial investment in listed securities. The directive was part of a broader liberalization push under President Joao Lourenco’s reform agenda, which included FX market deregulation, anti-corruption campaigns, and the PROPRIV privatization programme.

The same period saw the CMC ramp up its licensing activity, approving additional brokers and settlement agents to expand the intermediary layer. By 2019, the number of licensed brokers had grown to double digits, providing broader market access for both retail and institutional investors.

2022: The equity market launches – BAI and BCGA IPOs

November 2022 marked the most significant milestone in BODIVA’s history: the launch of the equity segment (mercado accionista) with the simultaneous listing of two companies.

Banco Angolano de Investimentos (BAI) – Angola’s largest bank by assets – became the first company to list equity shares on BODIVA, offering a minority stake to the public. The IPO was heavily oversubscribed, driven by pent-up retail demand and institutional mandates from pension funds and insurance companies. For a full profile, see the BAI company page.

Banco Caixa Geral Angola (BCGA) – the Angolan subsidiary of Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depositos – listed alongside BAI, providing immediate diversification and establishing the principle that BODIVA would not be a single-stock exchange.

The dual listing was strategically important for several reasons. First, it demonstrated that the regulatory, operational, and settlement infrastructure could handle equity transactions – a qualitatively different challenge from government bonds. Second, it created a visible market for corporate equity, establishing reference prices and generating media coverage that expanded public awareness. Third, it validated the PROPRIV privatization pathway, proving that state-owned bank assets could be partially divested through public markets.

2024: ENSA and BODIVA IPOs

Two more listings in 2024 doubled the number of companies on BODIVA’s equity board:

ENSA (Empresa Nacional de Seguros de Angola) – Angola’s largest insurer and a former state monopoly – completed its IPO, offering shares to both retail and institutional investors. The listing was significant as the first non-banking sector company on the exchange, providing sector diversification and exposure to Angola’s underpenetrated insurance market.

BODIVA itself listed on its own exchange, offering approximately 20% of its equity to the public. This self-listing – rare among African exchanges – was designed to enhance transparency, subject the exchange operator to the same governance and disclosure standards it imposes on its issuers, and create an investable proxy for the growth of the Angolan capital markets as a whole.

By year-end 2024, total transactions on BODIVA had reached 10,328 – a 105% increase over the prior year – with total value traded of AOA 6.06 trillion (approximately $6.6 billion). Custody accounts at CEVAMA stood at 58,389, reflecting the surge in retail participation driven by IPO subscription campaigns. For current market statistics, see the markets overview.

2025: BFA – the landmark listing

Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA) – Angola’s most profitable bank, majority-owned by the Isabel dos Santos-linked Unitel group until its expropriation by the state, and subsequently restructured – completed its IPO in September 2025. The offering was 5x oversubscribed, the highest subscription ratio of any BODIVA listing, and the shares gained 132% from the offer price in the initial period of secondary trading.

The BFA IPO was significant on multiple levels:

• Scale: BFA is one of Angola’s most valuable private-sector enterprises, and its listing materially increased the total market capitalization of BODIVA’s equity segment.
• Governance signal: The IPO was the most visible outcome of the government’s asset recovery and restructuring programme, demonstrating that expropriated assets could be returned to productive use through public markets rather than remaining in state hands.
• Investor confidence: The 5x oversubscription rate – in a country where capital markets were nonexistent a decade earlier – demonstrated that domestic savings could be mobilized for equity investment at scale.
• Market quality: BFA attracted the most diverse investor base of any BODIVA IPO, including pension funds, insurance companies, retail investors, and a limited number of international portfolio managers.

What comes next

The Angolan government has stated a target of 10 listed companies by 2027. The PROPRIV privatization pipeline includes transformational names: Unitel (telecoms), Sonangol (national oil company), TAAG (flag carrier), and Endiama (diamond monopoly). Each of these potential listings would be multiples of any previous BODIVA IPO in size and international attention.

The challenge ahead is less about political will – the privatization agenda has bipartisan support – and more about execution capacity: can the CMC process multiple complex prospectuses in parallel? Can CEVAMA’s systems handle a surge in account openings? Can the broker network distribute shares beyond Luanda to Angola’s 18 provinces? The answers to these questions will determine whether BODIVA fulfills its potential as a genuine frontier capital market or remains a small, interesting experiment.