The African Development Bank Group's Capital Markets Development Trust Fund (CMDTF) has achieved strong results in its first five years, training 763 capital markets professionals —37 percent of them women —while mobilizing $15 million to implement 13 groundbreaking projects that are reshaping Africa’s financial landscape across 15 countries.

The Fund provides technical assistance and capacity building to improve regulatory frameworks, upgrade market infrastructure, diversify financial products, and broaden investor participation across African capital markets. Its donor partners include the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

CMDTF marked the milestone with a panel discussion held in Abidjan on 28 May on the sidelines of the African Development Bank’s 2025 Annual Meeting. The event featured representatives of the Central Bank of Liberia, the Dépositaire Central/Banque de Règlement (DC/BR), the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations de Côte d'Ivoire (CDC-CI), and the African Development Bank Group. 

Game-Changing Market Innovations

The Fund’s impact extends across cross-border investments, innovative financial products and services, and risk-based supervision frameworks that are building more resilient, integrated African capital markets.

In Nigeria, CMDTF supported the Securities and Exchange Commission in designing a cutting-edge risk-based supervision framework aligned with international standards, dramatically boosting investor confidence. The fund also pioneered derivatives development and supported the Nigerian Exchange Group's (NGX) green bond issuance training programme, positioning Nigeria as a regional leader in sustainable finance.

CMDTF broke new ground in Ghana by developing the country's guidelines for asset-backed securities, paving the way for mortgage-backed securities and other innovative instruments that enhance market liquidity and diversify financial products.

For the West African Monetary Union (WAMU), the Fund has supported a comprehensive roadmap for local currency bond markets and a modernization of the region's financial market infrastructure.

CMDTF financed Cape Verde’s first-ever Capital Markets Master Plan—a blueprint for long-term growth that earned the African Development Bank recognition as the Cabo Verde Stock Exchange's Partner of the Year for outstanding contribution to capital markets development.

"I'm incredibly proud that, five years after the launch of the CMDTF, and following the Netherlands' initial  $4 million seed investment, we are now witnessing its full potential come to life," said Mark Zellenrath, Director for Multilateral Organizations and Human Rights of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. "The facility is boosting investor and stakeholder confidence, driving product diversification, and laying the groundwork for deeper, more resilient capital markets across the region."

Expanding Impact Across the Continent

Under its 2023–2026 strategy, the Fund will deepen interventions in markets where it is already active as well as expanding its geographic reach into new regions. The next phase will also focus on deploying innovative solutions including green bonds, gender-lens investing, and SME-focused finance tools.

To support this work, CMDTF is targeting galvanizing an additional $15 million in commitments to support regulators and bourses across Africa.

"The demand for agile, targeted technical assistance is stronger than ever, and CMDTF is uniquely positioned to meet this need," said Ahmed Attout, the African Development Bank Group's Director for Financial Sector Development Department. "The next five years are a key window for the CMDTF to drive collaboration and deliver innovative market-driven solutions."

The CMDTF will continue to play a pivotal role to deploy the African Development Bank Group’s upstream interventions to support the development of more resilient, deepened and integrated African capital markets, complementing the Bank Group’s investment and lending operations to broaden market participants and deepen capital markets instruments.

CMDTF is managed by the Capital Markets Development Division within the Financial Sector Development Department of the African Development Bank Group.