The year 2025 stands out as a turning point for the WAEMU public debt market. Not because it marked a rupture, but because it exposed the balances, tensions, and paradoxes of a market that has reached quantitative maturity while still seeking greater qualitative depth. Behind record issuance volumes, the market delivered a series of signals that were sometimes counterintuitive, often instructive, and consistently revealing. Ten key lessons emerge from this full-scale snapshot.

A market that has clearly shifted scale

The question of financing capacity is no longer framed in the same way. With nearly CFA11,900 billion ($21.6 billion) raised in 2025—more than double the amounts seen just three years earlier—the market has shown it can absorb large, repeated, and growing sovereign funding needs. The constraint is no longer access, but sustainability. Governments are able to raise funds, but under increasingly differentiated—and sometimes costly—conditions. Market size is no longer the issue; quality has become central.

The market differentiates sovereign risk despite the monetary union

The second lesson is that the market is no longer uniform. Despite the monetary union, a shared currency, and centralized monetary policy, investors now draw very clear distinctions between sovereign issuers. In 2025, this hierarchy is more visible than ever. Benin (6.2%) and Côte d’Ivoire (6.7%) continue to benefit from the most favorable conditions, while other countries, such as Niger, face a significant risk premium (10%, and 9.6% for Guinea-Bissau), both in terms of yields and maturities. The market does not exclude issuers; it prices risk. It is willing to finance all countries, but not at the same cost. This heightened selectivity reflects a more mature, but also more demanding, market.

Different issuance strategies

The year 2025 was also marked by wide disparities in issuance volumes across countries. Senegal, with CFA2,224 billion raised, recorded a sharp increase of 123% compared with 2024. Côte d’Ivoire remained the backbone of the market with CFA5,149 billion, while Benin (+56%) and Niger (+52%) also stepped up issuance significantly.

By contrast, Togo stood out as an exception, with issuance falling by 36% to CFA412 billion. More than a sign of stress, this decline appears to reflect a strategic choice: relying less on the domestic market to preserve the debt trajectory.

The market views today’s risk as higher than tomorrow’s

The fourth lesson lies in the shape of the yield curve, which tells a more nuanced story than yield levels alone. In 2025, the point of greatest tension was concentrated at the short and medium end of the curve, particularly on one-year maturities. Yields at these tenors were higher than on some longer maturities.

This hump-shaped curve is telling. It reflects short-term caution, strong demand for immediate liquidity, and, implicitly, expectations of greater stability over the medium and long term. The market is pricing current risk as higher than future risk. In a still uncertain macroeconomic and political environment, this signal is far from trivial.

A market that remains largely domestic, yet integrated

Despite rising volumes, the investor base has changed little. The market remains overwhelmingly domestic. In most countries, resident investors still account for between 80% and 90% of subscriptions. In Côte d’Ivoire, their share even exceeds 90%. Non-resident investors remain marginal, including for the strongest sovereign signatures.

The UEMOA public debt market therefore continues to function largely as a mechanism for recycling regional savings. It remains relatively captive and not yet sufficiently connected to international capital flows. This structure provides a degree of stability, but it also limits diversification of funding sources.

Is savings gradually replacing bank balance sheets?

Another quiet but structural shift is taking place in the composition of outstanding holdings. In 2025, growth in outstanding volumes was driven mainly by client accounts—pension funds, corporates, and insurance companies—whose holdings more than doubled in one year. By contrast, banks’ own-account holdings grew much more slowly, by just 9%.

Banks are increasingly stepping back from their role as final holders of sovereign risk. Instead, they are acting as intermediaries. Sovereign risk is gradually being transferred to savings, particularly household and institutional savings. This evolution is often presented as a sign of financial maturity. It nevertheless raises a central question: how well is savings protected against sovereign risk at a time when governments are intensifying their market borrowing? This year, they plan to raise up to CFA12,700 billion.

The secondary market makes a strong comeback

The seventh lesson is the renewed prominence of the secondary market, even though further progress is expected with the launch of the new trading platform on January 27, 2026. After a sharp decline in trading activity in 2023, liquidity rebounded strongly in 2024 and surged in 2025, with more than CFA5,400 billion exchanged.

The turnover ratio has returned to levels comparable to those seen before monetary tightening, at around 25%. This revival shows that the secondary market is not structurally dormant. It responds to liquidity conditions, interest rate expectations, and participants’ arbitrage needs.

Oulimata Ndiaye Diassé, chief executive of UMOA-Titres, on the right, at the launch of the trading platform

A lengthening primary market, a still short secondary market

The eighth lesson, however, is that liquidity remains very unevenly distributed. Trading is heavily concentrated in short- and medium-term maturities, particularly between six months and three years. This is where arbitrage takes place, portfolios are adjusted, and financial institutions manage their asset-liability positions. Beyond seven years, the secondary market is almost nonexistent. Long-term securities are bought in the primary market and then held to maturity. Duration risk is assumed, but it is not traded.

The liquidity premium is priced in at issuance, in the absence of a deep secondary market

The gap between the primary and secondary markets creates a structural paradox. Governments are increasingly able to issue medium- and long-term debt, but without benefiting from a deep secondary market at those maturities. This structural illiquidity is mechanically reflected in a premium embedded in issuance yields. In other words, the cost of long-term financing remains high not only because of sovereign risk, but also because of the lack of post-issuance liquidity. As long as this constraint persists, extending maturities will remain costly.

A more mature market, but still incomplete

The tenth lesson is perhaps the most political. The UEMOA public debt market has reached a stage where it effectively finances governments, but it does not yet fully perform its role of transforming savings into liquid and sustainable long-term investment. It is larger, more sophisticated, and more disciplined than it was five years ago. It is no longer an administered market. But it is not yet a fully mature bond market.

In 2025, the market did more than set records. It helped frame a fundamental question: how can it move from a market that finances to one that structures? The answer will not come from volumes alone, but from the ability to broaden the investor base, strengthen secondary market activity, and secure long-term liquidity.

Fiacre E. Kakpo