Casablanca jumps 3.33% to lead Africa as Johannesburg slips

Casablanca stole the show on Friday. Morocco's MASI index jumped 3.33% to 17,317.91, by far the strongest session among the African benchmarks we follow, and finished the week 2.31% higher.

The rally narrows, but does not erase, a difficult year for Moroccan equities: the MASI is still down 8.11% since January.

Johannesburg moved the other way on the day. The JSE All Share index slipped 0.48% to 112,739.38, although it held on to a 2.45% gain for the week. In Cairo, the EGX 30 rose 0.99% in its latest session on Thursday — the Egyptian exchange trades Sunday to Thursday — to 51,152.70, and added 3.75% over the week.

Cairo's remarkable year

Egypt's benchmark deserves a closer look. The EGX 30 is up 22.25% year to date, the best performance among the African indices we track and well ahead of Wall Street's S&P 500, which is up 7.25% over the same period. Johannesburg, by comparison, is down 3.38% for the year.

Inside Johannesburg's session

Friday's dip on the JSE was broad-based. Among 134 large-cap stocks, 75 fell and 52 rose. Commercial services led the sector table with a gain of 2.15%, followed by non-energy minerals (+0.93%) and consumer non-durables (+0.08%). Process industries (−2.62%), technology services (−2.48%) and communications (−2.03%) were the weakest groups.

Weaver Fintech was the session's top performer, rising 9.85%. Retailer Foschini Group gained 6.98%, Argent Industrial 4.11% and miner Gold Fields 3.91%. On the other side, Sappi tumbled 13.66%, Collins Property Group fell 10.00%, Frontier Transport 7.01% and iOCO 5.27%.

Gold Fields' gain came in a week when gold rose 1.16% to $4,070.59 an ounce. Copper, another metal that matters for the continent's miners, lost 5.07% over the week.

Tech and finance across the continent

Away from the trading floors, Africa's tech and financial-services story kept moving. TechCabal looked at why the UK is becoming a base for African tech companies, and reported that Kenya's WayaWaya has partnered with Choice Bank to launch AI-powered banking services. In Nigeria, TechCabal asked whether the country can secure its systems against hackers as it rewrites its cyber laws.

What to watch

No high-importance African data releases are on next week's calendar, so the region will take its cues from abroad:

• Sunday: the Egyptian Exchange reopens.
• Tuesday, 03:00 UTC: China's October trade data — closely watched by commodity exporters.
• Tuesday, 13:30 UTC: US October inflation, forecast at 3.9% year on year after 3.7%. A firmer dollar has been part of the backdrop: the US dollar index rose 0.71% on Friday.

Analysis by Amara Okafor, written with AI assistance from live market data (source: TradingView) and attributed third-party headlines. For information only — not investment advice.