Methodology

Every figure on AfriRadar comes from the weekly valuation report that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nigeria, publishes for collective investment schemes. This page explains how we read it and what the numbers mean.

The source

SEC publishes one Excel report a week on its website. Each report lists the collective investment schemes it covers, grouped by category, with the fund manager, net asset value, bid and offer prices, number of unitholders and two yield figures.

How we read it

A script checks SEC's page every day. When a new report appears, it downloads it, keeps an exact copy and reads the current week's columns by their headings. Before anything is published, it checks that:

  • the date in the report's title matches the date on the current week's columns;
  • the funds in each category add up to the sub-total SEC prints for that category;
  • each category total matches SEC's own category summary sheet;
  • the money market section is made up of money market funds.

If any check fails, nothing from that report is published, the site keeps the last report that passed, and we read the report by hand. When SEC uploads a corrected report for a week it has already published, we use its latest upload.

What the numbers mean

  • Fund size is the net asset value SEC reports for the fund, in naira, and in dollars where SEC gives a dollar figure.
  • Unitholders is the number of investors SEC reports for the fund.
  • Manager is the fund manager as SEC names it, tidied so each manager appears under one name: we leave out "Limited" and "Ltd", write "Mgt." in full and fix plain typing slips. The CSV download keeps SEC's spelling in its manager_as_printed column.
  • Yield: SEC's report has a week-to-date and a year-to-date yield column, filled in by each fund manager. For money market funds we show the year-to-date column as the reported yield. For other categories we show both columns as reported, and a blank means SEC printed no figure.
  • Change is the difference from the previous week's reported yield, in percentage points.
  • Not reported means the manager sent no money market yield, or a zero, for that week.
  • †: a few managers type a yield as a whole number, such as 17.5 instead of 0.175. For money market, bond and dollar funds we treat any yield above 150% as such a slip, divide it by 100 and mark that column.
  • ‡: we do not show a figure that cannot be a real yield. That means anything still above 150% for money market, bond and dollar funds after the step above, anything above 500% for other funds, and any negative money market yield. The cell reads "Not shown", and the figure SEC printed stays in the CSV download.

What we do not do

We do not rate funds, recommend funds or accept payment to change any figure. Sorting a table by yield shows what managers reported and nothing more. A fund's past yield does not promise its future yield.

History

Our archive starts with SEC's report for the week ended 3 January 2025 and grows every week. Every category page has the full history as a CSV download.

Kenya

Our Kenya page comes from the quarterly statistical bulletin of the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), Kenya, listed on its publications page. Each bulletin is a PDF with a table of assets under management for every unit trust scheme, this quarter and the quarter before. A scheme is a fund manager's umbrella of funds; CMA does not publish figures for each fund, or any prices or yields.

  • A script checks CMA's page every day, keeps an exact copy of each new bulletin and reads the table from its text.
  • The schemes must add up to the total CMA prints, to the shilling. Three times, CMA's printed total has been slightly wrong (KSh 819,262, KSh 45,626 and KSh 23,547,062); we checked each by hand against the rows, kept the rows and noted the gap. Any other mismatch stops the bulletin until we have read it by hand.
  • We work out every change from the two figures CMA prints. From 2026 the bulletin shows a fall in red without a minus sign, so we never copy its percentage column.
  • Fund managers sometimes appear under a new name. We join a scheme's history across a rename only when the new bulletin's figure for the quarter before matches the old name's figure exactly.
  • CMA publishes each quarter's figures about three months after it ends. Our history starts with December 2023.

Corrections

If you spot an error, email [email protected] with the page and the figure. We check it against the regulator's report and fix it.