The African Development Bank announces the udpdate of its composite index available to Bloomberg Professional® service subscribers via {BADB Index}. The index enriched with two sub-indices (BADBC and BADBX) was released in January this year to improve African Debt market liquidity and transparency.

The new {BADBC Index} is the capped version of the African Bond Index (ABABI) with a maximum exposure of 25% per country while the {BADBX Index} excludes South-Africa. The enhancement of the composite index family will provide investors with more diversified baskets, thus reducing their exposure to one major country.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) through the African Financial Markets Initiative (AFMI)^[1] launched its AfDB/AFMI^SM Bloomberg® African Bond Index (ABABI) in February 2015.  Calculated by Bloomberg Indices, the composite index is comprised of the South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana and Namibia local currency sovereign indices. In April 2017 Zambia and Ghana were added to the composite index.

The AFMI works to deepen the continent’s local currency bond markets and strives to create an environment where African countries can access financing at variable terms. By providing transparent and credible benchmark indices, the AFMI^SM Bloomberg® African Bond Index equips investors with a tool to measure and track the performance of Africa’s bond markets.

For more information on the AFMI visit www.africanbondmarkets.org (http://www.africanbondmarkets.org)