I have written about the inefficient information dissemination practices of African stock exchanges in the past.
The issue of stock exchanges not doing enough for its listed companies should be an agenda item for any listed company in most smaller African markets. The core of the problem as it relates to information dissemination relates to African stock exchange rules permitting hardcopy publication of corporate news / actions as the only dissemination medium.
In this modern day and age, hardcopy only dissemination is just not acceptable given the pervasiveness of the Internet as a communications tool. The absence of awareness at regulatory levels (and governance levels) of the key issues surrounding information dissemination practices is also inexplicable.
There is some good news however. News that we expect to grow in significance.
I am pleased to announce the launch of www.africansens.com, a portal to promote the 100% online dissemination of corporate actions and news for listed companies in Africa. Initially our focus is on providing 100% coverage of listed companies’ corporate announcements in Zimbabwe and this will be extended to Zambia, Botswana, Kenya and Malawi.
Access to the portal is free and is RSS enabled. Users of the site can receive corporate action alerts in their email as soon as they are published online on www.africansens.com. We are currently unable to publish all the content we receive online because we are doing this for free. Users will notice however that African Is Cool clients’ corporate action material will appear online in Africansens in full or at least a link thereto will be available.
We expect www.africansens.com to grow into our largest portal and hope to offer sponsorship / advertising to organisations that want to present their brand to the investment communities interested in African listed equities. Sponsorship funds raised will be re-invested into providing information for free through www.africansens.com.
From an online investor relations perspective, this www.africansens.com initiative complements the many others that we have to get our clients’ message out to the broader investment community. We have two twitter accounts: www.Africanfinancials.com and www.africaniscool.com to complement this and our portal www.africanfinancials.com has over 22,000 annual reports viewed online every month.
We look forward to your feedback.