Palava Research · 2026
Naira Shock: How Lagos Markets Out-Forecast the IMF on the 2024 FX Crisis
Adaobi Eze, Tunde Bakare, Wanjiru Mwangi
We benchmark Palava's USD/NGN markets against IMF consensus and central-bank forward guidance from Jan 2024 to Mar 2026. Crowd-implied probabilities led official revisions by 11.4 trading days on average and produced 38% lower MAE during the June 2024 devaluation week. We introduce a 'parallel-rate premium' metric to decompose informed vs noise trading.
Palava Research · 2025
Election Day Microstructure: Minute-Level Pricing of Ghana 2024
Kwame Boateng, Esi Mensah
Using order-book snapshots from the Mahama–Bawumia race, we trace how Palava markets weighted constituency returns versus social sentiment. Behavioural signals dominated in the first three hours of counting; structured EC data took over after midnight. We document a 'kente curve' — the characteristic S-shape Anglophone African markets follow during contested counts.
AfDB Working Paper · 2026
Prediction Markets as a Real-Time Macro Index for Frontier Economies
Dr. Folake Adeyemi, Prof. Mahmoud El-Sayed, Dr. James Otieno
Frontier-market policymakers rely on quarterly survey data with publication lags exceeding 90 days. We evaluate Palava's economy markets across Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa as a continuous nowcasting layer. Implied probabilities track CBN, CBK, CBE and SARB policy surprises with significant lead-time and provide a distributionally richer signal than consensus forecasts.
Palava Research · 2026
LLMs as Swahili Risk Managers
Sumayya Hassan, Brian Kiplagat, et al.
We pair Granger-causal market screening with a multilingual LLM (Swahili, Hausa, Amharic, French) that re-ranks lead–lag pairs by semantic plausibility. Across rolling AfCFTA market evaluations, the hybrid screener cuts average loss magnitude by 47% while improving win rate from 51.9% to 55.2%.
Palava Research · 2026
Forecasting AFCON: When Crowds Beat the Bookies
Chinedu Okafor, Aïssatou Diop, Hakim Benali
A head-to-head of Palava sports markets vs major European sportsbooks across 64 matches of AFCON 2025 and Olympic qualifiers. Palava priced upsets (Comoros, Cape Verde) with 22-point sharper Brier scores. We argue that locally-informed liquidity is the missing ingredient in African sports forecasting.
Palava Research · 2025
Mobile Money and Market Depth: M-Pesa's Effect on East African Liquidity
Wanjiru Mwangi, David Mutua
Rollout of mobile-money deposits onto Palava in 2024 expanded the East African staker base by 4.1×. We measure the resulting effect on order-book depth, bid-ask spreads and price efficiency. Results: tighter spreads, deeper books, and a flattening of the experienced-vs-novice information gap.