The Nairobi Securities Exchange has spent decades as a home for banks, telcos, and brewers. Now, it wants a different story. Recently, the NSE announced plans to build a dedicated technology board designed specifically to attract high-growth, venture-backed startups to its public markets. This is a direct move to fix a long-standing gap between Kenya’s booming startup scene and its relatively quiet stock exchange.
Gift Kori, the NSE’s Chief Listing Officer, made this point plainly at the Africa Tech Summit on February 12, 2026. “At the Nairobi exchange, we don’t have many tech companies,” he said. “Yet Kenya is still largely considered to be the tech home within the region. That is a sector we’ve been actively looking to unlock.”
The exchange has long attracted criticism for listing mostly blue-chip names like Safaricom, Equity Group, British American Tobacco, and East African Breweries. These are profitable, established businesses. Nevertheless, they do not represent the wave of fintech, health tech, and agritech startups that investors now associate with Nairobi’s innovation story.
What the NSE’s Tech Board Plan Actually Involves
The NSE does not plan to build an entirely new exchange. Instead, it wants to create a specialised tech segment that sits underneath its two existing market structures: the Main Investment Market and the Growth Enterprise Market Segment, known as GEMS.
Recent regulatory reforms now allow the NSE to build sub-boards under these two main boards. This opens the door for sector-specific platforms tailored to companies that do not fit the traditional listing mould. Kori described this regulatory shift as “the icing on the cake.”
The goal is to create a board with requirements and structures built for high-growth, early-stage companies across the continent, not just Kenya. That includes startups backed by venture capital and private equity firms that have so far had no clear path to a public exit at home.
The Ibuka Programme Taught the NSE a Hard Lesson
This is not the NSE’s first attempt to bring smaller companies onto the market. In 2018, the exchange launched Ibuka, an incubation and acceleration programme designed to help small and medium businesses improve their governance, financial reporting, and investor readiness ahead of an eventual listing.
The programme ran for several years and onboarded dozens of companies. However, very few of those companies followed through with an actual listing. Kori acknowledged the shortfall directly. “While it was well intentioned, it did not see the success it was meant to have,” he said.
The lesson here is that readiness programmes alone do not attract listings. Startups also need a market structure that matches how they operate, how they raise capital, and what their investors expect at exit. The Ibuka experience pushed the NSE to think bigger and redesign the entry point itself, not just the preparation process.
The NSE Sees a Broader African Opportunity
The tech board is not just about Kenyan startups. Kori described the board as targeting high-growth, early-stage companies across the continent. That framing matters because Africa’s startup ecosystem operates with regional characteristics rather than country-by-country silos. Investors and founders in Lagos, Accra, Kampala, and Kigali all watch what happens in Nairobi closely.
The NSE’s CEO, Frank Mwiti, has described 2026 as a year focused on “scaling the heights” rather than just stabilising. The exchange’s market capitalisation crossed Sh3 trillion ($23.25 billion) for the first time in 2025, and the NSE All-Share Index climbed more than 18 percent last year, outperforming several regional peers. That renewed confidence at the macro level now needs a pipeline of new companies to sustain it.
Predictions for 2026 suggest the window is opening. TechMoonshot projects at least six African tech companies will go public in 2026 across the Johannesburg, Lagos, Casablanca, and Nairobi exchanges. For the NSE to claim a share of that pipeline, the tech board needs to move quickly and clearly communicate its value to founders.
The Work Ahead Is Real
A dedicated tech board is a meaningful step. However, the NSE needs to pair this announcement with the kind of ecosystem engagement that the Nigerian experience showed was missing. That means running founder roadshows, simplifying listing documentation, and building awareness about what listing on the NSE actually involves.
The currency question also deserves attention. Many Kenyan startups raise in US dollars. Any listing framework that does not address the conversion dynamics for those companies will face resistance, just as the NGX did in Nigeria.
At the same time, the NSE has structural advantages. Kenya leads African startup funding. Nairobi carries real credibility as a continental tech hub. The Ziidi Trader launch has demonstrated that retail investor appetite for equities is growing. Regulatory reforms have already created the legal room to build sector-specific boards. The pieces are in place.
Now the NSE has to show startups that listing at home is not just possible but genuinely worth it.
