Lilongwe, Malawi
Abbreviation
ACE
Location
Lilongwe, Malawi
Region
Africa
Product Types
Agricultural
The Agricultural Commodity Exchange for Africa (ACE), founded in 2004 and headquartered in Lilongwe, Malawi, pioneered electronic commodity exchange infrastructure for southern Africa. ACE facilitates transparent spot trading for maize, soybean, groundnuts (peanuts), and other staple crops using a warehouse receipt system that enables smallholder farmers to access competitive prices and agricultural finance. ACE's electronic trading model has been replicated across sub-Saharan Africa as a model for commoditising smallholder agricultural production.
The Mercantile Exchange of Madagascar (MEX) is a commodity exchange based in Antananarivo, Madagascar, facilitating trading of agricultural commodities, metals, and energy products. Madagascar is a key producer of vanilla (responsible for ~80% of global vanilla supply), cloves, and other tropical agricultural exports. MEX provides a domestic trading platform supporting Madagascar's agricultural and natural resource sectors, offering price-discovery services for both local producers and international buyers.
Bourse Africa (formerly Global Board of Trade, GBOT), established in 2010 in Mauritius, was designed to be Africa's first multi-asset international exchange, offering trading in metals, foreign exchange, and other financial instruments. Headquartered in the Ebene Cyber City financial district, Bourse Africa aimed to leverage Mauritius's position as an African financial hub to provide access to commodity and forex derivatives for African and international participants.
The Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) is Kenya's primary auction market for specialty coffee, operating under the Kenya Coffee Traders Association and the Nairobi Coffee Exchange Act. NCE conducts weekly Tuesday auctions in which buyers bid for certified lots of Kenyan arabica coffee, graded and described by Kenya's Coffee Board grading system (AA, AB, C, PB, and others). Kenya is world-renowned for producing some of the finest washed arabica coffees, and the NCE auction system determines the global benchmark prices for Kenyan specialty coffee.
The Egyptian Commodities Exchange (EGYCOMEX) is a Cairo-based commodity exchange regulated by the Egyptian Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA). EGYCOMEX provides trading infrastructure for agricultural commodities (wheat, cotton, rice), energy products, and precious metals within Egypt's market. Egypt is one of Africa's largest wheat importers and a significant agricultural producer, and EGYCOMEX serves as a domestic price-discovery mechanism to reduce dependence on international benchmark volatility.