Best Forex Brokers in Africa

HFM was established in 2010 and quickly became very popular among traders. Currently, HF Markets serves more than 2.5 million trading accounts worldwide. 

HFM is a group of well-regulated brokers that provide financial services globally, Including in Africa. On the African continent, the broker is licensed in 2 jurisdictions. 

• HF Markets SA (PTY) Ltd is authorized and regulated as a Financial Service Provider (FSP) from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) in South Africa, under the license number 46632.
• HFM Investments Ltd is authorized by the Capital Markets Authority in the Republic of Kenya as a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker with license no. 155

Every trader has its own unique trading style and approach, and each approach requires different fee structures. For active traders, it’s better to open account types with the lowest spreads. And for less active traders, priority is the lowest commissions. 

In addition to commission-free and spread markup-free accounts, the broker offers Cent accounts. This account type is ideal for traders that wish to test their strategies with live trading conditions and risk the smallest capital in the process. To gain more insight about each account type, let’s take a look at the comparison table below. 

Tickmill is a group of highly reputable and well-regulated brokers founded in 2014. The broker has over 270,000 clients worldwide and offers various asset classes for trading including currency pairs, CFDs on Shares, indices, commodities, bonds and crypto CFDs. 

Traders from Africa can open accounts with Tickmill South Africa (Pty) Ltd, which is authorized and regulated by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA). The Licence number is: FSP 49464. 

In order to satisfy the needs of different traders, Tickmill offers 3 account types. And each one of them has unique offerings. The Pro and VIP accounts are built for active trading as they do not have spread markups, instead trading fees are charged as commissions. For less active traders, such as swing traders, beginners, and position traders, Classic account is offered. The Classic account has zero commissions and fees are included in spreads. For more details, let’s go through the account comparison table below. 

XM was established in 2009 and quickly became one of the top brokers in the world. The broker has a huge customer base consisting of over 5 million traders from 190 countries. The broker offers over 1200 CFDs for trading and a dedicated share trading account for trading physical stocks. 

The broker is well regulated in multiple jurisdictions. Traders from Africa can register with XM global limited. XM global is authorized and licensed by the International Financial Services Commission (FSC) of Belize with license number 000261/397. 

What makes XM unique is that the broker offers a share trading account along with 3 account types for trading CFDs. The Shares account is for investors, while CFDs are for short and medium term market speculations. For more details let’s check the comparison table below. 

AvaTrade was founded in 2006, and has created a large loyal customer base since. The broker has over 300,000 clients globally. Traders can access over 1250 financial instruments including currency pairs, stocks as CFDs, EFTs (Exchange Traded Funds), commodities, indices, and crypto CFDs. The broker offers a wide range of trading platforms including a full set of MetaTrader software, AvaTradeGo, and AvaSocial that help traders to copy trade or sell signals to other traders. 

AvaTrade is well-regulated globally. On the African continent, the broker operates under Ava Capital Markets Pty, which is regulated by the South African Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) with registration No.45984.

The broker provides exceptional customer service, available 24/7 in multiple languages. You can contact the broker via live chat, over the phone, or via email. AvaTrade offers 4 account types to its clients. Each type is created for different traders:

• Retail account: the retail account offers competitive spreads and a wide selection of tradable instruments. 
• Professional account: Offers high leverage, low spreads, and availability of using hedging and scalping strategies. 
• Islamic account: Islamic accounts are also known as swap-free accounts and they are compliant with Sharia Law and Islamic finance. 
• MAM (Multi-Account Manager): this account type is for traders that trade using various accounts. In general, MAM accounts are utilized by professional traders that use investor money in the financial markets.

Pepperstone is a well-regulated group of Forex and CFD brokers founded in 2010. The broker is trusted by more than 300,000 active traders. One of the key benefits to using Pepperstone is that the broker offers a wide selection of trading platforms such as the full selection of MetaTrader platforms, TradingView, and cTrader.

The broker is authorized and licensed in multiple countries. The African branch of the company is managed by Pepperstone Markets Kenya Limited, which is authorized and licensed by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in Kenya. CMA oversees the financial markets and employees policies that are designed to increase fairness, transparency, and efficiency.

For African traders, two account types are offered: Razor and Standard accounts. The Razor account type offers clients interbank spreads directly from liquidity providers, which makes the account type attractive for high frequency traders, arbitrage traders, intraday traders, and news traders, 

The Standard account has no commissions. Trading fees are included in the spreads and are variable, however, they typically start from 1 pips on EUR/USD. Which makes the account type better suited for beginners and traders that prefer to position trade or swing trade. 

In terms of tradable instruments, there is no difference from the traders' standpoint which account type they choose. Both accounts offer access to an equal number of trading assets from different instrument classes such as: Commodities, Energies, Metals, Indices, shares, and account types. For more detailed comparison, let’s take a look at account types.