20 Aug InfoTech set to enable East African Community’s financial markets regional integration as the landmark World Bank funded project nears completion

East African Community (EAC)’s breakthrough endeavor, the EAC Financial Sector Development and Regionalization Project I, funded by the World Bank to link the region’s financial markets nears completion as InfoTech spearheads the integration of the trading platforms of the Uganda Securities Exchange (Uganda), the Rwanda Stock Exchange (Rwanda), the Burundi Stock Exchange (Burundi) and Dar es Salaam Securities Exchange (Tanzania). This will enable them to run as a single market for both the Central Banks and Capital Markets in real time, stimulating intra-regional securities trade and investment.

InfoTech is set to effectively implement its principal Capital Market Suite, Capizar^® ATS, Central Depository System (CDS) interface and Messaging Platform for the securities market, by December 2020 despite the disruptions caused by Covid-19 pandemic. This solution will allow investors to place orders in the Central Trading and Smart Order Routing systems through a web based e-trading front end Trading terminal named EasyTrade. The Automated Trading System (ATS) and the Smart Order Router system shall either match the orders in the matching engine or route the order to the relevant Exchange if the order belongs to an exchange with its own ATS. However, EasyTrade, which is a multi-exchange web trading front end will receive market data feed from the internal ATS as well as the regional automated trading systems of the East African exchanges, thereby, ensuring that investors have a single platform to not only access market information of all exchanges but also initiate orders from the same application.

Furthermore, the Capizar^® ATS with Smart Order Router system will be linked with a Central Depository System interface for the provision of all the required data for pre-trade risk management and for the flow of settlement instructions after the execution of trades. The CDS interface is a web based Depository interface that will act as a single CDS for all the internal and external users, customers, registrars and issuers. The System will be linked with the underlying Depository Systems of the EAC countries through a robust, low latency messaging platform. Considering the critical nature of the data, InfoTech proposed the IBM Web Sphere MQ Low Latency to act as a messaging platform between the regional CDSs, Payment Systems and CDS interfaces.

Previously, there was no central platform for the EAC and InfoTech’s complete end to end automated solution will enable the linking of East African financial markets to achieve a single market. The investor community in the region will be able to trade from a unified platform that will be integrated with a Depository Interface of the regional Depositories while also being linked with the Central Bank’s payment messaging systems in East Africa. This will facilitate Trading, Clearing and Settlement, and Depository operations for the already automated, semi-automated as well as non-automated Exchanges. The integration will henceforth increase investment options and boost capital inflows especially in underperforming markets. The ease of trade and access to cross-border markets will not only reduce the cost and time of trading but also encourage trading activities enabling growth across the region.