Onshore vs offshore pools, the cost of intermediaries, and why direct banking relationships change the settlement math. For years, global treasury teams have treated African currencies as a rounding error — a set of exotic pairs handled by whoever their tier-1 bank happens to route to. That assumption is quietly costing them basis points on every ticket.

The reality on the ground is that liquidity in NGN, KES, GHS, EGP and the CFA blocs is fragmented across onshore banks, offshore NDF markets, and a growing set of licensed non-bank counterparties. A single-corridor view misses where the real depth sits.

In this piece we break down how a multi-venue approach — combining direct onshore relationships with offshore hedging — consistently outperforms the traditional correspondent chain, both on price and on settlement certainty