After Abidjan in 2025, the UMOA Public Securities Market Meetings, organized by the UMOA – Securities agency, are taking place in Lomé (Togo) for their 8th edition. This regional gathering, officially launched on Tuesday, January 27, ends this Wednesday after two days of work by key market players, including national Treasuries, investors, and financial sector specialists from 8 countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA).
As highlighted by Georges Barcola, the Minister of Finance and Budget of Togo, these meetings are taking place in a particularly demanding macroeconomic context marked, for UEMOA member states, by a sustained increase in public investment needs, the intensification of social pressures, and the persistence of high budget constraints in an uncertain international environment.
Indeed, he notes, the Public Securities Market has a “resolutely strategic and political significance”. “It is a central instrument of financial sovereignty in that it allows member states to mobilize savings in local currency, reduce their exposure to external shocks, and support, independently, the implementation of structuring and transformative public policies,” he said.
Over the past decade, the market has emerged as a pillar of public financing in local currency and an essential debt management instrument within the Union. In 2025, the mobilized resources reached 11,858.80 billion CFA francs, while the outstanding amount stood at 21,629.34 billion CFA francs, representing 14.6% of the Union’s GDP.
“Significant room for improvement”
Beyond the mobilized volumes, UMOA-Securities – the regional agency for the management and promotion of public securities in the area, created in 2013 by the Central Bank on the decision of the Union’s Council of Ministers – claims a significant qualitative balance: enhanced regularity and predictability of issuances, gradual diversification of maturities, as well as continuous professionalization of practices, both at the level of Treasuries, SVTs, intermediaries, and investors.
“If the overall performance is encouraging, the Public Securities Market still has significant room for improvement to reach its full potential and fully play its role in development financing, while preserving regional financial stability,” notes Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, Governor of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) in a speech.
Challenges
In the face of structurally increasing financing needs, he emphasizes, the main challenges to be met include strengthening the market’s absorption capacity, in connection with the expansion and diversification of the investor base, especially long-term institutional investors, the development and deepening of the secondary market, as well as the increased dynamism of the Treasury Securities Specialists’ activity.
“The lessons learned in recent years show that market resilience has been built in a context marked by persistent liquidity tensions. This observation reinforces the urgent need to sustainably consolidate the fundamentals of our market,” says Oulimata N’DIAYE DIASSE, the Managing Director of Umoa-Securities.
She also notes the need to analyze the market with “clarity”. “The liquidity of the secondary market remains limited, price formation is not yet fully optimized, and some operational weaknesses persist. Together, these factors continue to restrict the market’s ability to fully play its reference role. This is precisely the ambition of this edition of REMTP, to accelerate the transformation of the Public Securities Market towards a market that mobilizes and thrives; a market that is more fluid, deeper, and truly animated by continuous dynamics.”
For 2026, emission projections amount to 12,773.3 billion CFA francs.
