AFRICA – South Africa has once again dominated the market capitalisation of African Business Magazine rankings, with its technology giant Prosus leading the pack with a market capitalization of US$119.141 Billion.
The technology giant was followed by other 7 South African based companies in the top 10 list of Africa’s most capitalized companies.
These companies include Naspers, Financière Richemont, Anglo American, Anglo American Platinum, Firstrand, Vodacom Group, and Standard Bank Group.
North Africa’s Maroc Telcom at number 8 and East Africa’s Safaricom at number 10 were the only other companies out of South Africa that made it to the 10 ten list of the most market capitalized companies.
South Africa went ahead to dominate the top 250 most capitalized companies, delivering 100 of the 250 top companies in the continent.
The domination by South Africa according to Africa Business Magazine was partly because it was for many years been Africa’s top economy and partly because many leading South African firms have spread worldwide and grown their market capitalisations through overseas primary listings.
South Africa’s domination has however continued to gradually wane as other African markets begin to grow more strongly – at least before the crisis hit.
South Africa now has 100 companies on the list, down from 109 in 2019 while as a region, the total share of market capitalisation is only down marginally, from 79% of the total to 77.9% but the number of companies on the listing is down from 135 to 123.
As South Africa’s dominance wanes, North Africa seems to become the new frontier for Africa’s largest companies by market capitalization.
Three North African markets, namely Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia have been scoring the biggest gains in the top 250 companies list, increasing the number of total companies from 70 in 2019 to 83 in 2020.
Tunisia for instance has seven more companies bringing its total to 12, Morocco has added four to reach 30 companies on the list and Egypt has added two to reach 41.
The West African Region was swelled by two more Nigerian companies bringing the region’s total to 27 with combined market capitalisation of $33.1bn, down from $36.5bn a year ago.
The East African region was another loser, falling from 21 companies totalling $26.3bn (4% of total market cap) last year to 17 entries totalling $20.2bn (3.4% of the total) this year.
The Africa’s top 250 companies survey ranks African or Africa-focused companies listed on public securities exchanges according to their market valuation, also known as “market capitalisation”.
Total value for all 250 firms on the list this year is $597.7bn, down 20% from last year’s total of $748.2bn.
But last year had seen a 16% fall compared to total market capitalisation of $887.1bn in March 2018 and this year’s total value is 37% below peak value of $948.3bn in 2015.
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