Etim Etim
As Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede turns 60 on Thursday, September 24, his long-standing focus on capital markets raises a bigger question for Africa: can the continent build the financial infrastructure needed to turn its savings into sustainable wealth?
There is a peculiar contradiction in Africa’s economic story.
The continent is regularly described as capital-starved, yet it is not without money. There are sizeable pools of savings across pension funds, banks, insurance companies, institutional investors, family offices and private wealth. Africa also has no shortage of businesses requiring financing, infrastructure projects seeking long-term capital or entrepreneurs looking for investment.
The difficulty is connecting the two
Capital can exist in one part of an economy while opportunity sits somewhere else. Savings can remain conservatively invested while businesses with genuine growth potential struggle to obtain long-term funding. Investors can see opportunities across borders but encounter regulatory, currency, liquidity and information barriers that make those opportunities harder to access.
This is the capital question that has increasingly occupied Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede.
As the Nigerian banker, investor and entrepreneur turns 60, his career provides an unusual lens through which to examine a problem considerably larger than any individual institution: how does Africa build financial markets capable of mobilising, allocating and preserving capital at the scale required for its transformation?
It is a question with direct relevance to the work Aig (as friends, associates and family call him) now oversees at coronation.
Coronation brings together capabilities spanning investment banking, securities, asset management, wealth management, insurance, trustees, registrars and technology. The proposition is not simply that Africa needs more financial products. It is that capital becomes more useful when the different parts of the financial system are connected. That is a distinctly different way of looking at financial services.
The question is not simply how to raise capital. It is how to make capital travel further. The capital sitting on the sidelines Africa’s development financing challenge is well documented.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that the continent faces an annual development financing gap of more than $400 billion, even as Africa possesses significant domestic pools of capital. Its work on a new financial architecture for development is explicitly concerned with mobilising those resources more effectively and reducing the structural barriers that prevent capital from reaching productive investment.
This creates an important distinction between capital availability and capital mobilisation. Money in a pension fund is not the same thing as capital financing a new factory. Savings in a bank account are not the same thing as equity supporting an ambitious African company.
Insurance premiums collected today become much more economically powerful when the resulting pools can be invested prudently in long-term assets. The intermediary therefore matters. So does the market.
A functioning financial system must bring together people and institutions with different needs: businesses looking for capital, investors seeking returns, individuals building wealth, institutions managing risk and governments seeking financing for public priorities.
The more effectively those interests connect, the more efficiently an economy can allocate capital. This is where Aig’s perspective on African finance becomes particularly relevant.
His career has taken him through several parts of the market architecture — from banking to the Nigerian Exchange, FMDQ and EnterpriseNGR, alongside his involvement in conversations around the Lagos International Financial Centre.
The common thread is not a particular financial product. It is the market itself. From transactions to an ecosystem. For Aig, the development of African capital markets cannot be separated from the development of the institutions that operate within them.
A stock exchange can provide a marketplace, but companies need investment banks to structure transactions, securities firms to connect them with investors, asset managers to deploy capital, registrars and market infrastructure to administer ownership, insurers to manage risk and wealth managers to help individuals and families preserve and grow their assets.
These are not isolated businesses. They are parts of the same economic system. This is one reason the structure of coronation is significant to the wider capital-market argument. Its businesses span the capital cycle — from raising and deploying capital to managing risk and preserving wealth.
At the corporate end, investment banking and securities capabilities can help businesses access the capital markets. For investors, asset management provides mechanisms through which institutional and private capital can be professionally deployed.
For individuals and families, wealth-management capabilities create pathways for investment, preservation and long-term financial planning. Insurance provides another layer of the architecture, transferring and managing risks that could otherwise constrain investment and business activity.
Trustee and registrar capabilities provide the infrastructure required to manage ownership, fiduciary responsibilities and market administration. Technology increasingly sits across all of these functions, reducing friction and improving the ability of financial institutions to serve clients.
Seen this way, coronation is less a collection of financial businesses than a response to a particular African market reality: capital needs channels through which it can be raised, deployed, managed and preserved. That is the practical dimension of capital philosophy.
Why fragmentation matters
Africa’s problem is that those channels often stop at national borders. There are 54 countries, multiple currencies, different regulatory frameworks and capital markets at very different stages of development. An investor who wants to deploy capital across Africa may have to navigate a series of distinct systems rather than one deep and liquid continental market. This fragmentation has consequences. It can increase transaction costs. It can limit liquidity. It can make risk harder to price. It can discourage institutional investors from entering smaller markets. And it can make African businesses more dependent on a relatively narrow set of domestic or international funding sources.
The answer is not necessarily to create one African stock exchange or erase national markets. The more practical ambition is greater interoperability: stronger institutions, deeper pools of capital, better market infrastructure, more efficient cross-border investment and financial businesses capable of understanding both local realities and international capital. This is precisely why the development of African financial institutions matters.
A company expanding from Lagos into another African market needs more than a bank account. It needs financing, insurance, investment advice, market access, risk management and potentially access to investors beyond its home country. An institution with capabilities across those areas can become an important bridge.
The Coronation proposition
This is where coronation’s broader African positioning becomes relevant. The group’s stated purpose is to create a prosperous future for its clients and the African continent. Its operating businesses cover multiple aspects of financial services, allowing the group to engage with different stages of the wealth journey. The distinction is important. A financial-services company can sell a product. A broader financial platform can help solve a financial problem. The latter requires understanding how capital behaves across the economy.
An entrepreneur raising capital is connected to an investor looking for opportunity. That investor may be an asset manager. The asset manager’s clients may include pension funds or individuals. The business raising the money may require insurance. Its shareholders may require registrar services. Its founders may eventually need wealth-management advice. The financial system is interconnected even when its institutions are not. The opportunity for Coronation is to operate across those connections.
Its capital-markets businesses, for example, sit at the point where businesses and investors meet. Its asset-management and wealth businesses sit on the investment side of the equation. Insurance addresses risk. Trustees and registrars provide supporting market infrastructure. Each business has its own specialist function. Together, they provide a wider view of how capital moves.
Building depth, not just volume
The African capital-market conversation can sometimes become overly focused on the amount of money being raised. But volume alone does not create a sophisticated market. A healthy capital market needs depth. It needs investors willing to take different levels of risk. It needs businesses of different sizes seeking different forms of capital. It needs credible intermediaries. It needs information. It needs liquidity. It needs risk-management capabilities.
This is particularly important for long-term African investment. Infrastructure, energy, housing, healthcare and industrial development cannot all be financed with short-term money. They require patient capital.
They also require institutions capable of understanding complex risks and structuring financing appropriately. That is one of the reasons the growth of African asset management and institutional investment matters. The more sophisticated the investor base becomes, the more sophisticated the opportunities that can be financed.
Coronation’s presence across investment management, capital markets, insurance and wealth therefore has significance beyond the individual businesses themselves. It contributes to the wider ecosystem through which different forms of capital can meet.
The Lagos opportunity
This brings the discussion back to Lagos. Nigeria has one of Africa’s largest economies and one of its deepest concentrations of financial expertise. Lagos already hosts major banks, asset managers, insurers, securities firms, professional-services companies and a growing technology ecosystem. The question is whether those advantages can be organised into a financial centre with genuinely international reach.
The Lagos International Financial Centre initiative reflects that ambition. But financial centres are not built through slogans. London became a global financial centre because capital, institutions, professional expertise, law, infrastructure and international networks accumulated around it over decades. Lagos will have to compete on the same fundamentals.
Can investors enter and exit efficiently?Can companies raise capital competitively? Can institutions manage sophisticated risks? Can international investors understand and trust the regulatory environment? Can African businesses use Lagos as a gateway into other African markets?
These are the questions that determine whether a financial centre becomes an economic engine rather than simply a geographical description. Aig’s involvement in the wider conversation, including through EnterpriseNGR, reflects the understanding that Nigeria’s financial-sector development has implications beyond Nigeria. A stronger Lagos financial ecosystem could potentially serve companies and investors across West Africa and beyond.
Economic diplomacy and the new African investor
There is another dimension to this. African businesses are increasingly operating in a global investment environment. Capital can move towards the Middle East, Asia, Europe or Latin America as easily as it can towards Africa. The competition is therefore not simply between African companies. It is between investment opportunities. This makes economic diplomacy increasingly relevant.
Governments need to understand investors. Investors need reliable information about markets. Financial institutions need relationships across jurisdictions. African entrepreneurs need access to global networks without losing the ability to mobilise domestic capital. Aig has long argued for stronger engagement between government, regulators and private-sector capital.
The logic is straightforward: financial markets do not develop in isolation. Government creates the policy environment. Regulators establish confidence. Businesses create demand for capital. Investors provide supply. Financial institutions connect the two.
When these actors operate with a shared understanding of the economic objective, markets can become more effective. That is the essence of economic diplomacy applied to finance.
Beyond money
There is also a broader philosophy behind this approach. Aig’s thinking extends beyond financial capital to what can be described as knowledge and cultural capital. This matters because capital alone does not produce sustainable prosperity. An economy needs skilled people capable of deploying capital intelligently. It needs institutions capable of retaining knowledge. It needs entrepreneurs capable of converting ideas into businesses. And it needs a cultural environment that values creativity, innovation and long-term thinking.
Financial capital can fund an enterprise.
Knowledge capital makes the enterprise productive. Cultural capital helps determine what a society chooses to create, preserve and pass to the next generation. For coronation, this broader understanding of wealth is relevant to its positioning as a partner in sustainable wealth creation rather than simply a provider of financial products. The question is ultimately what financial services enable.
Do they allow an entrepreneur to grow? Do they help an institution invest for the long term? Do they help a family preserve wealth across generations? Do they help businesses manage risk? Do they create channels through which African capital can participate in African growth?
Those are more consequential measures than transaction volume alone.
The next financial architecture
Africa’s financial future will not be built by one institution. Nor will it be built by the government alone, by foreign investors alone or by technology alone. It will require an ecosystem. That ecosystem will need banks, securities firms, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, trustees, exchanges, regulators, technology companies, entrepreneurs and investors to become increasingly connected.
This is why the debate around African capital markets is ultimately a debate about institutions and platforms. The continent has entrepreneurs with global ambitions. It has increasingly sophisticated investors. It has large pools of domestic savings. It has businesses capable of attracting international capital.
What it needs is a financial system capable of connecting these resources more efficiently. That is the opportunity sitting behind Coronation’s evolution. Its breadth across capital markets, investment management, wealth, insurance, trustees, registrars and technology provides a platform through which different forms of capital can participate in the African economy. The ambition is not simply to manage money. It is to help capital move. And that distinction matters.
Because Africa’s next economic phase will require more than attracting capital from outside the continent. It will require mobilising the capital already within it, connecting it to productive opportunities and building the financial infrastructure that allows wealth to compound.
At 60, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede is more than what he has achieved. It is what kind of financial system Africa can build from here. One in which domestic savings finance domestic ambition. One in which African businesses can access deeper pools of capital. One in which Lagos can compete for international financial flows. And one in which institutions such as Coronation can connect the different sides of the capital equation — raising it, investing it, managing it, protecting it and preserving it.
That is the larger opportunity. Africa does not simply need more capital. It needs better connections between capital and opportunity. And building those connections may prove to be one of the defining financial projects of the next generation.
* Etim, a journalist, writes from Abuja