How continental trading platform can benefit you

African Consolidated Exchange (ACEX) chief executive officer Peter Mucheru (centre), exchanges views with some Dar es Salaam-based online platform entrepreneurs Joshua Fanuel (left) and Elibariki Shilla (right) during the official launch of the unified exchange platform in Nairobi. PHOTO | COURTESY

What you need to know:

Tanzania, along with other countries in Africa, stands to benefit from the recently-launched African Consolidated Exchange (Acex). In this interview with The Citizen reporter Josephine Christopher, Acex chief executive officer Peter Mucheru, explains more.

What opportunities can Tanzanians utilise in the Acex?

Tanzanians will have access to Acex through both Forex and crypto trade. Tanzania is extremely rich in minerals and therefore miners can list some of their minerals on our exchange and they will attract buyers from Africa and the rest of the world.

Tanzanian farmers, just like their counterparts across the continent, can also showcase their agricultural commodities on the platform so they can be seen by buyers from across the world.

Tanzania has a large youth population and this being an online business, we anticipate that this is the group of people who will benefit the most from this platform.

This is because this group of the population is easy to train, nurture and guide in how they can be gurus in this area. It is easy to bring them to use avenues like trading in both crypto and forex, commodities, oil, gas, as well as an avenue for companies to list or raise capital through various programs or value drivers that exist.

How do you intend to attract Tanzanians to this platform considering the low level of their engagement with e-commerce and uptake of digital currency?

Tanzanians are a very important part of the East African Community and therefore, efforts have to be made to ensure that they get equal opportunity in accessing the Acex platform. This will be achieved through the creation of Acex partners and franchisees. With these local partners, it will be easier to upgrade, educate, train, guide and have this community become a bigger player in the Acex trade platform stage.

In terms of the belief or non-belief in the digital currency, all we need is to proclaim the success achieved by the early birds within the same Tanzanian community. When they see people they can relate to succeed, it will become easier to convert non-believers and that’s why we want to work with the local communities of Africa.

With what level of income can an individual be part of the Acex?

To become part of Acex you only need to buy the platform’s digital currency in form of TEM coins. To begin with, one would need 100 coins which, as per the current price, one TEM coin is sold at $1.34 (about Sh3,200).

What kind of returns should an investor expect say monthly or annually?

Like every business investment, there are risks and this means that you could gain or lose your investment. However, our very experienced team is more than competent to guide our investors to ensure that they don’t make unnecessary losses.

What I can assure both our existing and potential investors is that the returns are lucrative when one follows instructions and invests in the right project within the Acex platform. They should therefore approach the Acex platform with a lot of confidence. This is a platform from Africa for Africans and one that is meant for us to trade in and take advantage and to bring financial independence to Africa.

Can SME businesses secure funding in the Acex platform? How is this done?

For SME businesses, we have TE venture capital business which deals with SME financing. Our website is very interactive and one can visit it to receive guidance on how to get financing from us.

What is the inspiration behind the setup of the Acex platform?

Acex was inspired by the fact Africa as a continent is extremely blessed with all manners of wealth all the way from minerals, oil and gas, agriculture commodities and natural resources, but in spite of all these resources, Africans still only export raw materials to western countries.

The key to this is the fact we don’t have markets where the buyers of these products can contact us directly. This means that the middlemen who buy our raw materials in Africa take them to their countries, add value to such products then sell them more expensively and sometimes, they sell them back to Africa with prices that we cannot afford.

Therefore, the role of Acex is ensuring that Africans get access to such markets and even generate revenue for value addition right here in Africa without going through the middlemen and cartels.

The other factor that inspired the creation of Acex was to bring closer to Africa the forex trading business which turns over about $6 trillion daily as at 2019 yet Africa doesn’t get any meaningful share. A majority of us fear being scammed by some of those trading platforms based outside of African borders.

We want to ensure that Africans have their own trading platforms where we all can trade without such fears and where we can use the skills that some of our leaders in Acex have, train, teach and guide our African entrepreneurs on proper ways to trade and get returns.

Crypto business is where all assets are traded, maintained, acquired through digital technology called block chain, this will also happen in Acex. Africa is already taking great strides in this area but we still don’t have an African exchange that can allow such trades to take place and that’s why we came up with Acex