Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange Plans Listing After IPO

Tanzania’s stock exchange is planning an initial public offering and listing, the second bourse in East Africa to begin trading its shares.

Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange Public Ltd. is seeking lead transaction adviser and co-sponsoring stockbrokers to handle the IPO, the date of which has yet to be determined, the company said in a statement published in the Daily News newspaper Wednesday.

Plans for the offering follow a change in the formation and name of the exchange “from a mutual company limited by guarantee to a public limited company,” it said.

The exchange, which has a market capitalization of 24 trillion shillings ($11.8 billion) is targeting a market value equal to 50 percent of Tanzania’s $33 billion gross domestic product by 2017. Last year, Tanzania scrapped controls on foreign ownership of shares in an effort to stoke demand on the bourse, which was Africa’s best performer last year when it gained 64 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.