Africa braces for global shockwaves

When several US investment houses collapsed in September, unleashing a chain of crashes in major markets around the world, brokers at Kenya’s Nairobi Stock Exchange anxiously watched the listings on their own boards. As feared, Nairobi share values did drop, and by late October were down 18 per cent from the start of the year. But that decline was far less steep than those in New York, London, Tokyo and other global financial centres.