(Bloomberg) -- The Ethiopian Securities Exchange plans to begin trading company shares, government-issued fixed income securities and money-market products as early as September, a move that comes as the war-ravaged country looks to attract new investors. 

About 10 state-owned enterprises, including Ethiopian Telecommunications Corp., have been cleared for listing on the exchange, which aims to have 90 publicly traded companies in the first seven to 10 years, Chief Executive Officer Tilahun Kassahun said in an interview. Investors will be able to buy stakes ranging from 10% to 100% in these state-owned enterprises, he said.

“As an exchange, we would like to be very much advanced, particularly in horizontally integrated financial infrastructure,” Kassahun said. 

ESX, as the exchange is known, plans to provide a trading platform for repurchase agreements, receivables discounting and other securities, such as interbank money-market funds, he said. The exchange targets both institutional and retail investors, including through equity and debt crowd funding platforms. 

Establishing a new bourse in Ethiopia — one of five big African economies that don’t have a stock exchange — is part of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s plan to open up the country to investors and help rebuild the economy. 

The government and the private sector are projected to have long-term financing needs of about 20 trillion birr ($351.3 billion) each over the next decade, according to the exchange. The country at the Horn of Africa has about 30 banks, with a total of about 400,000 shareholders.

ESX is working to finalize the allotment of shareholdings to investors including FSD Africa, the Trade and Development Bank and Nigerian Exchange Group, which submitted bids to own stakes in the exchange, Kassahun said.

“One of the things that we’re working on is how to accommodate some of the surpluses, but obviously cannot absorb everything that is coming our way,” he said.

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