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 10 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 limited distribution.

That gap helps explain Roqqu’s next plan. The Nigerian-founded cryptocurrency exchange wants to place local equities on blockchain networks and make them available to eligible investors abroad. The gap it targets is cross-border access: getting Nigerian-listed shares in front of buyers outside the country.

Roqqu already offers users tokenised US stocks through Ondo Finance, a US-based company that issues blockchain tokens linked to publicly traded shares. It now wants to reverse that flow by creating a route for Nigerian securities to reach investors outside the country.

Emmanuel Peter, Roqqu’s head of trading and markets, said the company sees itself as a distribution layer rather than a replacement for the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), the country’s stock exchange. Under the proposed model, existing brokers would buy the shares, authorised custodians would hold them, and Roqqu would provide the infrastructure for issuing corresponding blockchain tokens.

Other cryptocurrency exchanges could eventually distribute the same tokens, potentially extending 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 intended to prevent over-issuance. Roqqu told TechCabal that it also intends to distribute dividends, execute stock splits, and provide other shareholder benefits.

The company’s executives said Roqqu is engaging with regulators, brokers, custodians, and fund managers as it develops the proposed product. Roqqu has not named its institutional partners or identified which Nigerian stocks it would tokenize first. Its executives expect Nigerian tokenized securities to become available before 2027, although the product’s regulatory status and launch remain unclear.

How a Nigerian share could become a token

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), the depository where Nigerian listed shares are recorded. An issuer could then create 1,000 corresponding tokens, assuming that each token represented one share.

The investor could buy those tokens through an approved platform, subject to the rules governing their sale in Kenya. However, Roqqu has not disclosed the full arrangements for connecting token holdings to enforceable interests in the underlying shares, passing shareholder benefits to token holders, or processing redemptions.

How 1,000 Nigerian shares could become 1,000 tokens

A Kenyan investor wants exposure to a Nigerian bank. The possible route runs from shares bought on the Nigerian Exchange to blockchain tokens offered abroad.

Nigerian Exchange (NGX)

The Nigerian bank’s underlying shares trade on the NGX. The hypothetical tokenization process begins with ordinary listed shares, rather than with a token created without an underlying asset.

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 for tokenization has some scale behind it. Tokenized equities in the US have a distributed value of $3.32 billion, driven by stocks, according to the tracker RWA.xyz. Tokenization has also enabled Africa-focused companies including Daya, Luno, Roqqu, and Blockchain.com to offer users exposure to US equities through blockchain-based tokens, extending access to global markets.

The European Central Bank said in a paper published in April that tokenization could help ease illiquidity in capital markets, but only if wider access brings more buyers and sellers into the market.

For Nigeria, the opportunity would be to expand foreign participation in its own stock market. Foreign investors accounted for 4.89% of equity transactions on the NGX in August, representing ₦62.03 billion ($46.63 million) of the ₦1.27 trillion ($955 million) traded during the month, according to the NGX Domestic and Foreign Portfolio Investment Report. Since the beginning of 2026, foreign participation in Nigeria’s stock exchange has remained at 10.43% of total shares traded. Those figures quantify the access gap a tokenized distribution model would aim to close.

Tokenization could place local securities in front of investors who rarely use Nigerian brokerages. However, Dangote’s offering also illustrates the limits 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.

Any advantage would therefore have to come from cheaper distribution, faster settlement, or a compliant way to reach investors whom existing brokers cannot serve. Tokenization also 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 issued a five-year innovation exemption, allowing limited trading of tokenized listed shares on venues that meet 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 tokenization.

Tokenization remains at an early stage globally. In markets such as the US, where the regulator has provided a clear position, several companies are already active, including tokenization infrastructure firms Securitize and Ondo Finance. Ondo has separately built a US custodial model that enables shareholder voting. Nigeria, by contrast, is still shaping the rules that would govern a comparable product.

If Nigeria’s stock market is to be tokenized, traditional market participants—and possibly the listed companies themselves—would still need to participate. Companies may want to offer some of their shares to tokenized 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 that, while represented by digital tokens, constitute units of ownership in particular companies.

In January, the Nigerian SEC set minimum capital requirements of ₦1 billion ($703,000) for real-world asset tokenization platforms and ₦2 billion ($1.5 million) for digital asset exchanges. The regulator’s proposed rules in August lowered the requirement for tokenization platforms to ₦500 million ($376,000), although it has not confirmed whether that change has taken effect.

NASD, Nigeria’s exchange for unlisted securities, is also developing a blockchain-based platform to issue and transfer digital securities. None of these measures amounts to blanket permission for a cryptocurrency 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 would also need enforceable custody and nominee arrangements to exercise voting rights and recover assets if an intermediary fails. That 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.

For example, suppose a share last traded at ₦100 ($0.075). If an investor wants to sell the corresponding 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 tokenized-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 pursuing an opportunity to make Nigerian securities easier to hold and trade without weakening the rights attached to them. The challenge will be demonstrating that blockchain can add investors, liquidity, and enforceable ownership while attracting institutions capable of supporting the structure. The details to watch are the ones Roqqu has yet to provide: named institutional partners, the first stocks it tokenizes, confirmation of the revised capital requirements, and workable arrangements for redemption and after-hours liquidity.

Source: TechCabal