A firm built around six things.
Shabba Financial is a team of traders and engineers based in Dar es Salaam, building algorithmic market-making infrastructure for East African capital markets.
The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange, like most exchanges on the continent outside South Africa, had never had a dedicated algorithmic market maker. The capital was there. The investors were there. What was missing was the boring infrastructure that makes a market a market: continuous quoting, tight spreads, predictable fills, a counterparty on the other side of every trade when one was needed.
Traders and engineers came together around the idea that this work was straightforward, important, and not getting done. We decided to do it. The firm has been deliberate ever since.
Six things we keep coming back to.
Honesty with the market
Quoting honestly, hedging cleanly, and treating liquidity provision as a public function. A market maker who games the people they quote to does not stay around for very long.
Intellectual humility
Markets are smarter than any one model. We hold our pricing and risk assumptions lightly enough to update them when the evidence says we should, and firmly enough to not be moved by the loudest voice in the room.
Depth over breadth
We would rather get one product right than offer three half-built ones. Each thing we add gets the same operational rigor the previous things got.
A twenty-year horizon
Capital markets are built over decades. The decisions that matter most are the ones whose payoff arrives years after the work is done. We are structured to take those decisions.
Patience with regulators
Authorization is the foundation under everything we build. We engage with regulators carefully and openly, on their timeline, and we aim to earn every license we need rather than work around them.
Less hierarchy, more work
The work matters more than the titles. The right answer wins regardless of who said it first or how senior they are. That is the operating culture we hold to as the firm grows.
Today, Shabba’s focus is the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange in Tanzania, where we build algorithmic market-making designed to offer continuous, two-sided liquidity on listed counters.
Kenya is the next market in focus. We are currently in an active pilot programme with the Nairobi Securities Exchange, building toward an algorithmic options book run from Nairobi.
Beyond Tanzania and Kenya, the continent. Patiently. Each new market we extend into gets the same regulatory engagement, local partnership work, and operational depth as the first two.
