You might think that the huge sell-off in certain US stocks caused by rising inflation would have a direct negative impact on the level of activity on investment platforms for retail investors.
But for Bamboo, Nigeria’s investment app, which offers users the ability to invest in US securities, the opposite is true. The number of users on the platform has more than doubled from around 200,000 late last year to almost 500,000 today.
“We’ve seen a huge growth of users into Bamboo,” says Deola Adebiyi, Bamboo’s community engagement manager. “People are discovering Bamboo and when they do it introduces them to the stock market.”
Adebiyi attributes the growth to the enormous pull that the US stock market has for Nigerian and African investors despite currently being a bear market. The key to maintaining and even increasing user numbers during a tough period is being honest about the realities of the market, she says.
“Even though the market isn’t doing well I’d like to think that we are growing because we are educating people that even though it is not doing well, there are opportunities to invest.”
Bamboo makes US stock market accessible to Africans
Offering users educational tools and a simple solution to invest in US assets is a key reason behind Bamboo’s rapid growth since it was launched in 2020.
The firm raised a $15m Series A funding round in January after only two years of operations. It will pump the capital into building new products and…
