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Investing in independence: popular shareholding on the West African stock exchange

Africa (London. 1928), 2022-08, Vol.92 (4), p.644-662 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute ;Copyright © International African Institute. ;COPYRIGHT 2022 Cambridge University Press ;The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is included and the original work is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the associated terms available at: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/reusing-open-access-and-sage-choice-content ;ISSN: 0001-9720 ;EISSN: 1750-0184 ;DOI: 10.1017/S0001972022000365

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  • Title:
    Investing in independence: popular shareholding on the West African stock exchange
  • Author: Mizes, James Christopher
  • Subjects: Accumulation ; Advocacy ; Audience ; Capitalizing Africa ; Economic aspects ; Economic elites ; Elitism ; Ethnographic research ; Financial market ; GDP ; Gross Domestic Product ; Institutional investments ; Investments ; Money ; Morality ; New stock market listings ; Political activity ; Political aspects ; Political participation ; Politics ; Populism ; Public enterprise ; Shareholders ; Sovereignty ; Stock exchanges ; Stock-exchange ; Stockholders ; Study abroad ; Transparency
  • Is Part Of: Africa (London. 1928), 2022-08, Vol.92 (4), p.644-662
  • Description: According to contemporary investors on the Regional Stock Exchange of West Africa (Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières de l’Afrique de l’Ouest or BRVM), President Félix Houphouët-Boigny’s post-independence plan to privatize state-owned enterprises in Côte d’Ivoire gave birth to the region’s financial market. Yet the bourse’s original promise of ‘indigenous’ control of financial investment has long gone unrealized. In response, a West African investor advocacy organization is coordinating a regional awareness programme that introduces ‘the culture of the stock exchange’ to an audience of West Africans largely unfamiliar with financial securities. Members of this shareholders’ association share a critique of elite monetary institutions and advance in their place a more popular vision of savings, investment and exchange. Drawing on ethnographic research in Abidjan and Dakar, I analyse how these petits porteurs (small shareholders) frame the morality and politics of their investments. The petits porteurs often make good money on the market, but even when they take on ‘crisis-level’ losses they nevertheless extoll the virtues of transparency, formality and control that the stock exchange is thought to provide. In contrast to similar cases elsewhere in the world, I argue that this form of popular politics on the BRVM is far more than an instrument for the accumulation strategies of financial elites: it is a new and distinct style of political engagement in which petits porteurs are, in the name of the West African ‘people’, coupling together anti-elite and anti-colonial critiques with a set of familiar market devices. I characterize this political engagement as popular shareholding.
  • Publisher: Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
  • Language: English;French;German
  • Identifier: ISSN: 0001-9720
    EISSN: 1750-0184
    DOI: 10.1017/S0001972022000365
  • Source: AUTh Library subscriptions: ProQuest Central
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