Methodology and sources

The Six is free public intelligence from The Black Executive Journal. It brings together market, macroeconomic and policy data on the five African Union regions and the African diaspora. Every figure shows its source and the period it covers.

The six regions

Regions 1–5 follow the African Union's own grouping of its 55 member states into Northern, Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa (AU member states). Region 6 is the African diaspora, which the AU regards as its sixth region. The Six tracks it through four hubs: the Caribbean, North America, Latin America and Europe.

Sources

Mansa API (mansaapi.com): exchange index levels, daily stock prices and volumes for 21 African exchanges, exchange rates (open.er-api.com), commodity benchmarks (FRED series) and central bank policy rates with the source institution for each.
Africa-API (africa-api.com): country indicators from the IMF, the World Bank and national central banks, trade series, election calendars and the Casablanca MASI index. We credit the original source of each figure.
World Bank World Development Indicators: the diaspora hub economies (Region 6).
Twelve Data (twelvedata.com): daily closing prices for the US-listed companies and funds in the BEJ Diaspora Equity Index, and the daily spot price of gold.
BEJ research: the policy, citizenship, reparations and restitution records. Each entry quotes its source and is checked before publication.

How often it updates

Index levels hourly during African trading hours on weekdays; stock prices once a day after the close; exchange rates every four hours; policy rates daily; country indicators weekly to monthly, as their sources publish. Pages refresh every ten minutes.

Data checks

A daily index move above 5% is held back unless our own previous close confirms it.
Indicators are hidden when their latest observation is too old: more than six years for annual series and two years for monthly ones.
Where sources disagree, the most recent reporting period wins.
Commodity prices are removed when stale: daily prices older than 21 days, monthly averages older than five months, and any figure entered by hand.

7-session trend lines

The small line next to each index shows its closing level over the last seven sessions we hold, green if it is higher than seven sessions ago and red if lower. Hover over it, or use a screen reader, to get the dates and the change over the period. A new index shows a dot until two sessions have been recorded.

The Sixth 100

The 100 most actively traded companies on the African exchanges we cover, ranked by average daily traded value (price × volume) over up to the last 20 sessions, converted to US dollars at each day's rate. Each AU region with exchange data gets at least its five most-traded companies; the rest of the list is filled on value alone. It measures liquidity, not company size, and it is not investment advice. The diaspora region has no exchange in our feeds yet.

The BEJ Diaspora Equity Index

Region 6 has no exchange of its own, so The Six tracks a basket of US-listed securities. Sixty percent of the weight goes to companies that are Black-owned or Black-led, chosen on ownership or leadership as stated in the company's own filings and publications: Urban One, Carver Bancorp, Broadway Financial (City First Bank) and RLJ Lodging Trust. Forty percent goes to diaspora and Africa-access funds: the Impact Shares NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF and the VanEck Africa Index ETF. Each sleeve is equal-weighted and rebalanced daily. The index level chains the weighted average of each day's price returns from a base of 100. Dividends are not included. We review the basket each quarter and publish every change. It is a market signal for the region, not a fund or investment advice.

The Macro Pulse

A 0–100 score for each AU member state showing where it ranks among its AU peers on five measures: real GDP growth (higher is better), inflation (lower), public debt as a share of GDP (lower), the current account balance as a share of GDP (higher) and the World Bank political stability estimate (higher). Each measure is converted to a percentile among member states with data, and the score is their average. It is shown only when at least four of the five are available. It is a relative snapshot, not a credit rating.

Using this data

Every dataset can be downloaded free as CSV or JSON: Sixth 100, Macro Scorecard and Policy Tracker (add .json in place of .csv for JSON).

Policy & Citizenship Tracker: BEJ's own research, published under CC BY 4.0. Credit "The Six, The Black Executive Journal" with a link.
Market and macro figures: these come from the third-party sources credited on every row (exchanges via Mansa API, the IMF, World Bank, UNCTAD and central banks via Africa-API), and those sources' terms apply. The Sixth 100 ranking and the Macro Pulse score are BEJ's; credit The Six when you use them.

Spot an error? Email info@blackexecutivebrief.com.