On 7th October 2026, we wrote about the price of the same Dangote share in 2 cities.
In Lagos, the minimum order was 10 shares at ₦525 each, about Sh492.50.
In Nairobi, through the new depositary receipts, it was 2,000 receipts at Sh53.50 each.
Sh107,000.
We ended on a sum. Sh107,000 is 1 order. It is also 200 orders of Sh535.
On 12th October 2026, Renaissance Capital made it 1 order of Sh535.
Sh535.
The cut
The Kenyan minimum fell from 2,000 receipts to 10, a cut of 99.5%. Renaissance said the change followed feedback from investors, high demand and approval from Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority, and that it brings the Kenyan minimum in line with the Nigerian one.
Now a Kenyan buys the same 10 shares a Nigerian does. The only gap left is the receipt’s small premium: Sh535 in Nairobi for what costs about Sh492.50 in Lagos.
The calendar moved too. Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission approved a 2-week extension, so the offer, open since 14th September 2026, now closes on 27th October 2026, today. The proposed allocation goes to Nigeria’s regulator on 10th November, and trading is expected in early December.
The wall
Ethiopia is opening its own door to the same offer. It is built differently.
The Ethiopian Capital Market Authority lets the shares be sold only to qualified investors: institutions, and individuals with a net worth of at least 10 million birr, not counting their home and 1 car. That is roughly $61,000 at market rates in early October 2026. No more than 100 investors may take part unless the regulator allows more, and every promotion must say the offer is not open to the Ethiopian public.
10 million birr.
The authority’s director general, Dagmawit Shiferaw, calls such cross-border limits transitional. Ethiopia’s exchange is young. It opened in January 2025 and lists 7 companies, 6 of them banks. When Sidama Bank listed in September 2026, 9 shares changed hands in its first session.
Aliko Dangote came to Addis Ababa on 15th October 2026 to court investors, and offered the Ethiopian public something else. He pledged to list at least 10% of Gode, the fertilizer plant his group is building with the state’s Ethiopian Investment Holdings, on the Ethiopian Securities Exchange once production is stable. It is designed to make 3 million tonnes of urea a year.
“Even if he doesn’t agree, we will take our own 10 percent and sell.”
Aliko Dangote, on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
The pattern
Ethiopia is not alone in drawing the line by wealth.
In Central Africa, the regional market regulator, COSUMAF, lifts its CFA20 billion cap on private placements from 1st November 2026 and lets each placement take up to 99 investors instead of 40. They must still be qualified: an individual needs CFA50 million of net worth, about $89,000. The smallest ticket is CFA10 million.
Sh535 in Nairobi.
10 million birr in Addis Ababa.
CFA50 million across Central Africa.
The lesson
In 2 weeks, the price stopped being the wall. The cheapest door into Africa’s largest share sale now costs about the same in Lagos and in Nairobi.
What decides who gets in now is a rule: who a regulator counts as an investor. In 1 market, that is anyone with Sh535. In others, it is anyone whose wealth, beyond their house and their car, would buy several more.
That rule is where the next build sits. Kenya’s fix came from the issuer, which cut its own minimum. Where the regulator draws the line by wealth, the route runs through a vehicle that counts as 1 qualified investor and holds the shares on behalf of many small ones: a licensed fund that pools. It needs a fund license and a regulator’s yes. The demand is already standing at the door.
Sh107,000. Sh535.
The smaller tap got fitted in Nairobi. In Addis Ababa, the door is still sized for 100.
