Simba Commodity Exchange (SCX) is a Nairobi-headquartered, regulated futures exchange designed to provide transparent price discovery, structured risk management, and institutional market access for agricultural and mineral commodities across East and Southern Africa. SCX represents a new class of financial market infrastructure on the continent — one built not as an informal marketplace, but as a sovereign, rule-based derivatives exchange capable of serving the full spectrum of institutional participants.
SCX is not a spot marketplace. It is a derivatives market infrastructure purpose-built to enable hedging, forward pricing, and capital formation at a regional scale. Unlike platforms that begin as physical commodity exchanges and attempt to layer derivatives capabilities onto an existing spot structure, SCX has been designed from the ground up as a futures exchange — with centralized clearing, standardised contracts, and margin discipline forming the core of its operating model.
The exchange is positioned to serve the critical gap in East and Southern African capital markets: the absence of a robust, regulated mechanism through which commodity producers, processors, financiers, and institutional investors can manage price risk, access forward pricing signals, and participate in structured commodity markets with full regulatory oversight. SCX is that mechanism — architected to international standards, governed under Kenya's capital markets framework, and designed to grow into the region's leading derivatives hub.
Headquarters
Nairobi, Kenya — at the heart of East Africa's financial and commercial corridor
Market Type
Regulated futures and derivatives exchange — institutional-grade, not informal or spot-based
Our Vision
To establish Africa's leading regional futures market for commodities, integrating producers, processors, financiers, and institutional investors into a transparent, rule-based trading ecosystem that anchors Nairobi as the continent's pre-eminent derivatives hub.
SCX's vision is grounded in a structural understanding of Africa's commodity markets: they are large, dynamic, and exposed — yet chronically underserved by formal price discovery and risk management infrastructure. Agricultural commodities underpin the livelihoods of hundreds of millions across the region. Mineral resources represent enormous wealth pools. Yet producers, processors, and investors operating across these value chains have had limited access to the hedging tools, forward pricing signals, and capital formation mechanisms available in more mature markets.
The vision of SCX is to close this gap decisively. By establishing a regulated futures exchange that operates to international standards, SCX aims to bring the full discipline of derivatives market infrastructure — price transparency, risk transfer, margin integrity, and institutional participation — to the East and Southern African commodity complex. This is not an incremental improvement on existing platforms. It is a structural transformation of how commodity price risk is managed and how capital flows into African commodity value chains.
Transparent Price Discovery
Establishing real-time, exchange-driven benchmark prices across agricultural and mineral commodities that serve as credible reference points for the entire regional market.
Rule-Based Ecosystem
Creating a market governed by published rules, independent oversight, and international standards — removing opacity and discretion from price formation.
Regional Integration
Connecting producers, processors, financiers, and investors across East and Southern Africa into a single, liquid, and regulated market infrastructure.
Our Mission
SCX's mission is operationally specific. Every pillar of the exchange's design — from its contract specifications to its clearing architecture to its governance framework — flows directly from a set of clearly articulated market objectives. The mission is not aspirational language. It is the functional specification for what SCX does and why it exists.
Enable Price Risk Management
Provide standardised futures contracts through which commodity market participants can lock in forward prices, hedge input costs, and manage exposure to price volatility across agricultural and mineral markets.
Support Value Chain Financing
Create forward markets that enable structured trade finance, collateral-backed lending, and value chain investment across agricultural and mineral sectors in the region.
Institutional-Grade Clearing
Operate a centralised clearing and margining system that provides financial integrity, counterparty risk elimination, and settlement certainty to all market participants.
Attract Domestic & International Liquidity
Build a liquid, deep market that draws participation from local commercial banks, pension funds, and asset managers, as well as international commodity traders, DFIs, and institutional investors.
Build Sovereign Financial Infrastructure
Establish an exchange architecture that is governed, controlled, and operated as sovereign African market infrastructure — aligned with global standards but owned by the continent.
What Makes SCX Different
Competitive Differentiation
Most African commodity platforms begin as spot exchanges — physical marketplaces where producers and buyers transact on immediate delivery terms. This is a legitimate and important function, but it is not the same as a derivatives market. Spot exchanges provide transaction efficiency; futures exchanges provide risk transfer. SCX has been deliberately and structurally designed to do the latter, launching as a futures exchange from inception rather than attempting to evolve from a spot platform over time.
This distinction is fundamental. A futures exchange requires a different regulatory framework, a different technology architecture, a different clearing infrastructure, and a different participant ecosystem than a spot exchange. By designing SCX as a futures exchange from the outset, the exchange avoids the structural compromises and transitional inefficiencies that characterise platforms attempting to retrofit derivatives capability onto a spot foundation.
Conventional African Commodity Platforms
Spot-focused with informal price discovery
Limited clearing and counterparty risk exposure
Retail and smallholder participant base
Cash settlement with physical delivery dependency
Fragmented, bilateral transaction structures
SCX — Futures Exchange from Inception
Standardised futures contracts with margin discipline
Centralised clearing and counterparty risk elimination
Institutional participant ecosystem
Structured settlement mechanisms
Risk transfer — not cash trade — as the primary function
The focus of SCX is unambiguously on risk transfer. Participants come to SCX not to buy or sell physical commodities, but to manage their exposure to commodity price movements — to hedge forward, to establish benchmark-linked pricing in contracts, and to access a liquid market for price risk. This positioning places SCX alongside international exchanges such as CME, ICE, and the JSE's commodity derivatives platform, rather than alongside spot marketplaces. It is a deliberate choice, and it defines everything about how the exchange is built and governed.
Core Products — Phase I Futures Contracts
Phase I Launch Portfolio
SCX's Phase I product suite has been calibrated to reflect the most significant commodity exposures across East and Southern African value chains — those where price volatility creates the greatest risk management need, where sufficient underlying physical market activity exists to support futures liquidity, and where institutional appetite for structured derivatives products is demonstrably present. The initial contract portfolio spans both agricultural and mineral commodities, recognising the dual economic significance of these sectors across the region.
Agricultural Futures
Maize
East Africa's staple grain, with deep physical markets and significant price volatility exposure across producers, millers, and food processors.
Wheat
Import-dependent in most of the region, creating structural hedging needs for importers, processors, and commercial bakers.
Coffee
A major export crop across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda — with significant basis risk relative to ICE benchmark pricing.
Tea
Kenya is the world's largest black tea exporter; structured forward pricing is a natural requirement for estate operators and exporters.
Sugar
A key agro-industrial commodity across the region, with milling, refining, and trading operations requiring price risk management tools.
Mineral Futures
Gold
A critical export commodity across East Africa, with strong institutional demand for hedging tools from mining operators and trading companies.
Copper
Central to the energy transition and deeply embedded in Southern African mining economies — Zambia and the DRC in particular.
Lithium
Selected contracts targeting the rapidly growing critical minerals sector, with East African deposits attracting significant international investment.
All contracts are standardised for contract size, expiry cycles, margin requirements, and settlement methodology. Physical delivery mechanisms are integrated selectively, but the primary purpose is price hedging — not physical commodity transfer.
Market Participants
Institutional Ecosystem
SCX is an institutional market. It has been designed, regulated, and structured to serve professional market participants operating within formal commercial and financial frameworks — not informal traders or retail speculators. This is a deliberate design choice that reflects both the nature of futures markets and the strategic objective of building credible, internationally comparable market infrastructure.
The participant ecosystem spans the full commodity value chain, from primary production through to institutional capital allocation. Each participant category brings a distinct function to the market: producers and aggregators generate the underlying physical commodity exposure that creates demand for hedging; exporters, processors, and traders require forward pricing tools to manage commercial risk; financial institutions provide liquidity, financing, and investment capital; and brokers and clearing members provide the market access and settlement infrastructure through which all participants interact with the exchange.
Commercial Producers & Aggregators
Large-scale commercial farmers, cooperatives, and commodity aggregators who carry significant price risk from harvest to point of sale and require forward hedging mechanisms.
Exporters & Processors
Commodity exporters and agro-industrial processors whose purchase and sale prices are determined by market benchmarks, creating natural demand for futures-based pricing tools.
Commercial Banks & DFIs
Financial institutions providing commodity-linked trade finance and structured lending, for whom exchange-traded futures contracts provide collateral valuation and risk mitigation frameworks.
Pension Funds & Asset Managers
Institutional investors seeking commodity exposure as a portfolio diversification tool and inflation hedge, operating within regulated, exchange-governed structures.
Licensed Brokers & Clearing Members
Regulated intermediaries who provide market access, execution, and clearing services — the essential connective tissue between end participants and the exchange.
Clearing & Risk Management Framework
Financial Integrity Architecture
The clearing and risk management framework is the financial backbone of SCX. It is what distinguishes a regulated futures exchange from a bilateral over-the-counter trading platform, and it is what enables institutional participants to engage with confidence, knowing that their counterparty risk is eliminated and that settlement obligations will be met regardless of individual participant default. SCX's clearing architecture has been designed to meet international standards for central counterparty (CCP) operations.
Central clearing means that SCX interposes itself as the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer — eliminating bilateral counterparty risk and ensuring that all contracts are guaranteed by the exchange's clearing infrastructure. The margining system — comprising both initial margin posted at contract inception and variation margin adjusted daily to reflect mark-to-market movements — ensures that the exchange always holds sufficient financial resources to cover open exposures.
Default management procedures establish the clear, pre-published sequence of actions the exchange will take in the event of a clearing member default — including the application of the defaulting member's margin, the use of the clearing fund, and, if necessary, the allocation of losses across surviving members. Position limits and market surveillance provide the behavioural guardrails that prevent market manipulation, concentration risk, and disorderly trading conditions. Together, these mechanisms constitute a comprehensive risk management framework that protects market integrity and financial stability at all times.
Governance & Regulatory Alignment
Regulatory Framework
SCX is structured as a regulated exchange under Kenya's capital markets framework, overseen by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA). This regulatory foundation is not merely a compliance requirement — it is a strategic asset. Regulatory recognition under a credible national framework is the precondition for cross-border institutional participation, for recognition by international counterparties and correspondent banks, and for the exchange's long-term position as sovereign financial infrastructure rather than a private trading venue.
Governance Architecture
Independent Board Oversight
A board comprising independent directors with relevant market, legal, and financial expertise, providing strategic governance and accountability.
Audit & Risk Committee
A dedicated committee responsible for financial oversight, internal audit, risk appetite governance, and regulatory compliance monitoring.
Market Surveillance
An independent surveillance function with authority to monitor trading activity, investigate anomalies, and refer potential violations to the regulator.
Fit & Proper Standards
Published fit and proper requirements for all exchange members, brokers, and clearing members — ensuring participant quality and integrity.
Segregated Client Assets
Full segregation of client funds and assets from member proprietary positions — a fundamental investor protection mechanism.
International Standards Alignment
SCX's governance and operational frameworks are aligned with the CPMI-IOSCO Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures — the globally recognised benchmark for exchange and CCP governance.
This alignment enables SCX to engage with:
International institutional investors operating under global compliance frameworks
Multilateral development banks and DFIs with cross-border mandate requirements
Correspondent banking relationships requiring regulated counterparty status
Regional regulatory cooperation under East African Community frameworks
Technology Architecture
Sovereign Infrastructure Design
SCX is designed as sovereign financial infrastructure. This is not a marketing statement — it is a precise description of the technology governance philosophy that underpins the exchange's systems architecture. Sovereign infrastructure means that the exchange governs its own technology stack: no single vendor defines the architecture, no proprietary system creates a dependency that cannot be managed, and the exchange retains full control over its data, its matching logic, and its settlement processes.
This approach reflects hard lessons learned from exchanges globally that have experienced operational and strategic vulnerabilities from excessive vendor dependency. SCX's technology architecture has been designed to avoid these vulnerabilities through an open-standard integration philosophy, a modular matching engine capable of independent upgrade and replacement, and a clearing and settlement platform that operates on published interfaces accessible to all authorised participants.
Exchange Control Layer
Sovereign governance of all core exchange functions — rules, access, and data ownership reside with the exchange
Modular Matching Engine
Open-standard, modular order matching with low-latency execution and full audit trail
Clearing & Settlement
Integrated CCP platform with real-time margin calculation, position management, and settlement processing
Broker API Connectivity
Standardised API layer enabling direct broker connectivity, algorithmic trading access, and third-party system integration
Real-Time Data Dissemination
Live price feeds, market depth data, and settlement prices distributed to participants, data vendors, and the public
Revenue Model
Financial Sustainability
SCX's revenue model is structured to reflect the core functions of a regulated futures exchange: the majority of revenue derives from derivatives trading and clearing activity, with supplementary revenue streams from data services, membership, and collateral management. This composition ensures that the exchange's financial interests are aligned with its core market function — growing trading volume, deepening liquidity, and expanding participant access.
Revenue Composition
SCX targets a revenue composition in which 65–75% of total revenues derive from derivatives trading activity — comprising futures trading fees and clearing and settlement fees. The balance is drawn from data services, membership and licensing fees, and collateral management services.
This structure creates a resilient, diversified revenue base that reduces dependency on any single income stream while ensuring that the primary growth driver remains aligned with the exchange's core mission: growing liquid, active futures markets for African commodities.
Data services represent a strategically important revenue stream, as SCX-generated benchmark prices for African commodities have the potential to become the regional standard referenced in physical contracts, financing agreements, and government policy — creating a compounding network effect as market depth increases.
Strategic Objective
Why SCX Exists
SCX exists to do something that has not been done before at scale in East and Southern Africa: to build regulated, institutional-grade futures market infrastructure that fundamentally changes how commodity price risk is managed, how capital flows into commodity value chains, and how African markets are integrated into the global commodity trading ecosystem. The strategic objectives are interconnected and mutually reinforcing — each one creates the conditions for the others to be realised.
Reduce Price Volatility Exposure
Provide producers, processors, and traders with the hedging tools to manage commodity price risk systematically — reducing the economic vulnerability of agriculture and mining value chains to market shocks.
Formalise Regional Commodity Markets
Bring structure, transparency, and regulatory discipline to commodity markets that have historically operated informally — creating the price discovery and market integrity infrastructure on which formal finance depends.
Enable Trade Finance
Use structured futures contracts as the foundation for commodity-linked trade finance — enabling banks and DFIs to lend against transparent, exchange-valued commodity positions with confidence.
Crowd-In Institutional Capital
Create the regulated, transparent, and liquid market environment that pension funds, asset managers, and international institutional investors require before allocating capital to African commodity markets.
Establish Nairobi as a Derivatives Hub
Position Nairobi — and Kenya's capital markets ecosystem — as the pre-eminent centre for commodity derivatives in the East and Southern African region, attracting liquidity, talent, and institutional participation from across the continent and globally.
SCX is not a marginal improvement to the status quo. It is a structural intervention in how African commodity markets function. The exchange has been designed, governed, and resourced to deliver on that ambition — and to do so in a manner that is transparent, regulated, and aligned with the long-term interests of the region's producers, financiers, and sovereign stakeholders.
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