The impact of COVID-19 on stock market performance in Africa: A Bayesian structural time series approach

This paper evaluates and quantifies the short-term impact of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) on stock market performance in thirteen (13) African countries, using daily time series stock market data spanning 1st October 2019 to 30th June 2020. We employ a novel Bayesian structural time series approach (a state-space model) to estimate the relative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on stock market performance in those countries. Generally, our Bayesian posterior estimates show that, in relative terms, stock market performances in Africa have significantly reduced during and after the occurrence of the COVID-19, usually between -2.7 % and -21 %. At the heterogeneous level, we find that 10 countries have their stock markets significantly and adversely affected by the COVID-19, whereas the remaining 3 countries see no significant impact (or a rather short-lived negative significant impact) of the COVID-19 pandemic on their stock markets. We find that, within our sample period, there is almost no chance that the COVID-19 pandemic would have positive effects on the stock market performance in Africa. Our findings contribute to the discussion and research on the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing empirical evidence that the pandemic has restrictive effects on stock market performance in African economies.