DAR ES SALAAM, July 21 -- EVERY country wants faster economic growth. Governments build roads, expand electricity networks, improve ports, invest in education and introduce policies to attract investment.

These are all necessary. Yet history suggests that one institution quietly determines how quickly all these ambitions become reality: the capital market, with its innate resources allocation efficiency function.

The difference between countries that industrialise rapidly and those that stagnate is often not a shortage of ideas or even a shortage of resources. It is the speed at which savings are transformed into productive investment. Capital markets are the machinery that performs this transformation.

Unfortunately, much of Africa ha...