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The biggest risk for investors in Nigerian and other frontier-market equities may not be the quality of a company’s management and governance or the pace of local growth. It is the currency in which that company borrowed.
A report by Chapel Hill Denham argues that exchange-rate depreciation is broadly predictable over long periods and that companies which fund local-currency operations with dollar debt can erase otherwise strong operating results when their domestic currencies weaken.
The study’s core conclusion is simple: companies generating naira revenue should finance assets with naira equity and naira debt, rather than dollar-denominated parent-company or related-party loans.
That balance-sheet structure creates a natural hedge against depreciation, while dollar debt turns currency weakness into an equity-destroying event
FX is the structural risk
The report tested currency performance across nine major African economies plus India, using annual exchange-rate and inflation data from 1990 through 2025. It found that annual currency moves remain difficult to predict, with inflation differentials explaining only 14.6% of year-to-year exchange-rate movements.
Over decades, however, the relationship was much stronger. The report found that the long-run inflation differential with the US explained 98.3% of the level of currencies in the ten-country sample, with a pass-through coefficient of 0.962, close to the one-for-one outcome implied by purchasing-power parity.
Nigeria was among the countries with the strongest long-term fit: suggesting the currency’s long-term path has broadly reflected Nigeria’s inflation differential with the US, despite abrupt and difficult-to-time devaluations.
The Nigerian hurdle
For a dollar-based investor, predictable depreciation creates a demanding return…
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Read Full Article by Bala Augie at moneycentral.com.ng
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