When Dangote Refinery began selling shares in September, Nigerians could subscribe through dozens of banks and digital investment apps for as little as ₦5,250 ($3.96) for ten units. Investors elsewhere in Africa had fewer options. The $1.6 billion offer was registered only in Nigeria, leaving interested buyers in markets such as Kenya and Botswana subject to local securities rules and with limited distribution.
The gap helps explain Roqqu’s next bet: the Nigerian-founded cryptocurrency exchange wants to put local equities on blockchain networks and make them available to eligible investors abroad. The startup already offers its users tokenised US stocks through Ondo Finance, a US-based company that issues blockchain tokens linked to publicly traded shares, and now wants to reverse that flow.
Emmanuel Peter, Roqqu’s head of trading and markets, sees the company as the distribution layer rather than a replacement for the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), the country’s stock exchange. Existing brokers would buy shares, authorised custodians would hold them, and Roqqu would provide the infrastructure to issue corresponding blockchain tokens. Other crypto exchanges could eventually distribute the same tokens, widening access beyond Roqqu’s users.
Roimot Ibitoye, the company’s chief compliance officer, said the tokens would be matched by shares held in custody, with regular checks to prevent over-issuance. Roqqu told TechCabal that it intends to distribute dividends, execute stock splits, and provide other shareholder benefits.
According to its executives, Roqqu is engaging with regulators, brokers, custodians, and fund managers as it develops the proposed product. The company has not named its institutional partners or identified which Nigerian stocks it plans to tokenise first. Its executives expect Nigerian tokenised securities to become available before 2027, although the product’s regulatory status and launch remain unclear.
How a Nigerian share becomes a token
As an illustration, consider a Kenyan investor seeking exposure to 1,000 shares of a Nigerian bank. A possible structure would involve an authorised Nigerian broker buying the shares on the NGX and a regulated custodian holding them through the Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS). An issuer could then create 1,000 corresponding tokens, assuming each token represented one share.
The investor could buy those tokens through an approved platform, subject to the rules governing their sale in Kenya. But Roqqu has not disclosed the full arrangements for connecting token holdings to enforceable interests in the underlying shares, passing through shareholder benefits, or handling redemptions.
How 1,000 Nigerian shares could become 1,000 tokens
A Kenyan investor wants exposure to a Nigerian bank. Follow the possible route from shares bought on the Nigerian Exchange to blockchain tokens offered abroad. Tap any step to see what it does.
Nigerian Exchange (NGX)
The Nigerian bank’s underlying shares trade on the NGX. The hypothetical tokenisation process begins with ordinary listed shares, not with a token created out of nothing.
How to read this: This is a hypothetical six-stage illustration, not a live Roqqu product or a confirmed transaction structure. The identities of the proposed broker, custodian, issuer and distribution partners have not been disclosed. One token per share is an illustrative assumption, not a verified product term. CSCS is part of the underlying securities infrastructure; it is not presented as the token issuer.
“If we’re saying today that we are buying 100 million [Dangote] shares, there needs to be some sort of verification to confirm that we actually have those 100 million shares,” Ibitoye said. “And if we’ve minted [100 million tokens], there’s supposed to be some weekly attestation to ensure that the current position we say we have, and what is currently being minted and available, is still the same thing.”
Access is not the same as ownership
The commercial argument has substance: tokenised equities in the US have a distributed value of $3.32 billion, driven by stocks, according to the tracker RWA.xyz. Tokenisation has also enabled Africa-focused companies, such as Daya, Luno, Roqqu, and Blockchain.com, to offer users exposure to US equities through blockchain-based tokens, extending global access.
Tokenisation could help ease illiquidity in capital markets, but only if wider access brings more buyers and sellers into the market, the European Central Bank (ECB) said in a paper in April.
For Nigeria, the opportunity is to widen foreign participation in its own stock market. Foreign investors accounted for just 4.89% of equity transactions on the NGX in August; that’s ₦62.03 billion ($46.63 million) of the ₦1.27 trillion ($955 million) traded in the month. Since the start of 2026, foreign participation in Nigeria’s stock exchange has remained at 10.43% of total shares traded. Tokenisation could place local securities before investors who rarely use Nigerian brokerages.
Yet, Dangote’s offering exposes the limit of that proposition. Nigerian investors already buy shares through mobile apps and other low-cost channels. A token, by itself, would not make an unregistered Nigerian security legal to sell in Kenya or Europe. Its advantage would have to come from cheaper distribution, faster settlement, or a compliant way to reach investors that current brokers cannot serve.
Tokenisation does not automatically confer shareholder rights. Those rights depend on the token’s legal structure and its connection to the underlying shares.
In September, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a five-year innovation exemption, allowing limited trading of tokenised listed shares on venues meeting its conditions. Holders must retain the same voting, dividend, and other rights as conventional shareholders. Synthetic products that only track prices do not qualify, and listed companies can object to third-party tokenisation.
While tokenisation globally is still early, in markets like the US, where the regulator has given its clear stance, several players, such as tokenisation infrastructure companies Securitize and Ondo Finance, are already active in the US market. Ondo has separately built a US custodial model that enables shareholder voting.
In essence, if Nigeria’s stock market must be tokenised, it still needs the traditional players, and possibly the listed companies themselves, to come on board. These companies may want to offer a part of their shares to tokenised distribution platforms to access global capital.
The harder part is the market beneath the token
Nigeria’s Investments and Securities Act (2025) expressly brings digital assets under securities regulation, particularly blockchain-based versions of equities, which, while digital tokens, represent units of ownership in particular companies.
In January, the Nigerian SEC set a minimum capital of ₦1 billion ($703,000) for real-world asset tokenisation platforms and ₦2 billion ($1.5 million) for digital asset exchanges. Its proposed rules in August lowered the requirement for tokenisation platforms to ₦500 million ($376,000), although the regulator has yet to confirm whether that change has taken effect. NASD, the Nigerian exchange for unlisted securities, is also developing a blockchain-based platform to issue and transfer digital securities.
None of these steps amounts to blanket permission for a crypto exchange to create tradable versions of listed shares. Roqqu still needs a structure that reconciles blockchain balances with the CSCS and clarifies who legally owns a share.
Fractional token holders still need enforceable custody and nominee arrangements to exercise voting rights and recover assets if an intermediary fails, which is why the company is working with traditional asset management, brokerage, and custodial partners.
Liquidity creates another complication. If the tokens trade outside NGX hours, investors could buy and sell them while the underlying share market is closed.
Say a share last traded at ₦100 ($0.075), for example. If an investor wants to sell their token at night but the only buyer offers ₦90 ($0.068), the investor must either accept less or wait. The share backing the token does not guarantee that a tokenised stock investor can cash out immediately at ₦100 ($0.075). Roqqu has not disclosed who would provide that liquidity or how redemptions would work.
The company said it is targeting the opportunity to make Nigerian securities easier to hold and trade without weakening the rights attached to them. But the challenge is proving that blockchain adds investors, liquidity, and enforceable ownership, while attracting interest from institutions capable of making it happen.
True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
