Top 10 African countries with the largest pension assets
A country’s ability to bolster local investment is significantly attached to the strength of its pension assets. This is the point noted in Absa’s 2023 Financial Market Report.
“Large pension assets” refer to a significant amount of financial resources that are held within pension funds or retirement savings accounts. These assets are set aside and invested to provide financial security and income for individuals when they retire.
In Absa’s 2023, Africa Financial Markets report, the metric of local investor capacity served as one of the six pillars used in determining the most booming financial markets across Africa.
This pillar focuses on local investor capacity by assessing the development of pension systems. “Pension funds have the potential to drive capital market development owing to their extended investment horizons and ability to diversify across a wide range of asset classes, such as listed equities, corporate bonds, and private markets,” the report states.
According to the report, this pillar is “based on two components: pension fund assets in per capita terms to assess their size, and pension fund assets relative to domestically listed securities to gauge their support of local capital markets.”
As with every pillar, this was scored over 100, with some countries indexing close to the max score of 100 and some close to the minimum score of 10.
With that said, below are the top 10 African countries with the largest pension assets in 2023.
| Rank | Country | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Namibia | 100 |
| 2. | South Africa | 63 |
| 3. | Mauritius | 61 |
| 4. | Estwani | 60 |
| 5. | Botswana | 57 |
| 6. | Seychelles | 57 |
| 7. | Morocco | 29 |
| 8. | Nigeria | 27 |
| 9. | Lesotho | 25 |
| 10. | Cabo Verde | 23 |
