Unlocking Capital for Africa's Cooperatives
CDEx is Africa's first regulated exchange dedicated exclusively to cooperative debentures — giving your society direct access to local and international investors, backed by commodity assets and insurance.
The Challenge
Cooperatives across Africa generate real economic activity in agriculture, mining, manufacturing and housing. Yet the financial system was not designed for them. The result is a capital gap that limits growth, limits members, and limits nations.
One member, one vote — no matter how much is invested. Outside equity disrupts cooperative governance and dilutes member control.
Traditional lenders demand assets cooperatives often do not hold in their own names, locking out the very societies doing the most productive work.
Millions of Africans abroad want to invest back home — but there is no structured, regulated channel for them to do so at scale.
Cooperatives produce enormous commodity value — tobacco, maize, minerals, timber — yet this wealth cannot be easily securitised or offered to investors.
"African cooperatives produce the continent's wealth. CDEx exists to ensure they can also access it."
William Gonyora · Cooperative Financier · Co-founder, CDEx
The Solution
A debenture is a debt instrument — your cooperative borrows capital from investors and repays it over an agreed term, with interest. On CDEx, every debenture is commodity-backed, insured, and structured to comply with your jurisdiction's cooperative law.
Ownership passes with possession — making the instrument freely tradeable between investors on the exchange without reference back to your cooperative.
No hard collateral required from the cooperative. Instead, the commodity your members produce — grain, ore, timber — underpins the debenture's value.
CDEx partners with leading insurers (CBZ Insurance, Old Mutual) to insure the entire production and commodity delivery process for each listed debenture.
CDEx operates under a Securities Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe licence, providing investors with the regulatory protections of a formal securities market.
In Zimbabwe, debentures are expressly authorised under Chapter 24:05 of the Cooperative Societies Act — your legal right to raise capital this way is clear.
Your debenture can be purchased by investors in Zimbabwe, across Africa, and by diaspora communities worldwide — through a single regulated platform.
How it works
CDEx guides your society through the entire process — from eligibility check to live trading — with dedicated support at every stage.
Register your cooperative's interest at coops.africa. Our team verifies registration, by-laws, and commodity output to confirm readiness to list.
We work with your management committee to determine the amount to raise, the term, the interest rate, and the commodity that will underpin the instrument.
The value chain is insured by our partner insurers. The debenture is reviewed by our compliance team and registered for listing on CDEx.
Your debenture goes live on the exchange. Investors subscribe. Capital is released to your cooperative to fund production, infrastructure or equipment.
Eligible sectors
Any registered cooperative society operating in a commodity-producing sector is eligible to list on CDEx — whether you grow it, mine it, build it, or process it.
Eligibility
CDEx is open to cooperative societies across Africa — registered under their national cooperative legislation and operating in commodity-producing or asset-backed sectors.
Reach out to the CDEx team today. We will guide you through every step — from your first eligibility check to your first successful debenture raise.