What is the Central Securities Depository (CSD)?

The Central Securities Depository is the market's back-office infrastructure: an automated platform that holds securities as electronic book entries instead of paper certificates.

It provides post-trade services — registering ownership, safe custody, clearing and settlement of trades, and processing corporate actions — for both government and private securities. Holding securities electronically (“dematerialised”) makes the market faster, safer and more transparent and reduces systemic risk.

In Ethiopia the CSD is overseen by the National Bank of Ethiopia; both the NBE's dematerialisation directive and ECMA's directive on dematerialisation of publicly offered securities require securities to be held this way. It is also where investors' bids for government Treasury bills are submitted.