NdioLa
Market infrastructure that lets Africans price and hedge local risk.
A prediction market on questions Kenyans already care about.
NdioLa lists binary questions in seven categories. They are politics, economy, business, geopolitics, culture, weather and technology. Each question has exactly two outcomes. Participants trade them, and the price of an outcome can be read directly as the market's probability that it happens.
Ndio and La are the Swahili words for yes and no. That is the whole product in two words. Every question resolves to one of them, and nothing is listed that cannot.
The reason to build it is that these risks are already being carried. A trader importing goods carries currency risk whether or not there is a market for it. A farmer carries rainfall risk. A household with a loan carries rate risk. Today each of them absorbs the uncertainty and hopes. A price turns that uncertainty into something readable, and something that can be hedged.
A price is also information. Once a question has a market on it, the market's view is public, continuously updated, and free to read. Anyone planning around the same uncertainty gets the benefit of it, including people who never trade.
That is the test a subject has to meet before it is listed: somebody plans around the outcome. Hedging is the sharpest case of it and not the only one. An importer holding currency exposure, a promoter scheduling around an award announcement and a distributor waiting on a vendor's release date are all planning against something they do not control. The seven categories are seven places where outcomes of that kind are published on a schedule.
How a question works.
Three steps, and no discretion at any of them.
Listing
The question is written as a proposition with two outcomes and one settlement source. The source is named in the question itself, before trading opens. Nothing opens without one.
Trading
Participants trade the two outcomes against each other. The price moves as information arrives and can be read at any moment as a probability. Positions can be closed before the question resolves.
Resolution
The named source publishes. The market resolves against what it published, mechanically. Nobody at NdioLa reads the result and decides what it means.
Four rules the catalogue is built on.
They constrain what can be listed. That is their function. A market is only as good as the questions it refuses.
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Every question is strictly binaryTwo outcomes, mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive. No scales, no ranges resolved by interpretation, no third outcome held in reserve for an ambiguous result. If a question cannot be written so that exactly one of two answers is true, it is not listed.
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The settlement source is named before the question opensA specific published source, identified in the question, fixed at listing. It is not chosen after the fact, and it is not swapped once trading has begun. A participant knows what will decide the question before committing to a position.
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Resolution is mechanicalThe source publishes, and the market resolves against it. There is no review, no judgement call and no discretionary override. That holds in the situations where discretion would be convenient for us.
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Questions are curated, not openThe catalogue is written by NdioLa, not submitted by participants. Anyone may propose a question; only questions that satisfy the first three rules are listed. An open submission queue makes rules one to three unenforceable.
A market whose operator can decide outcomes is not a market.
What gets listed.
Seven categories, and one test running through all of them: somebody plans around the outcome. Every one resolves against a named public source published in advance. The source is fixed when the question is listed, never chosen once the result is known.
Politics
Settles against an official published result, or the formal record of a decision issued by the body that took it. Not press coverage of the decision, and not a projection of it.
Economy
Settles against a scheduled statistical release or a central bank publication. The figure is issued on a calendar known well before the question opens.
Business
Settles against a company's own published filing or formal announcement. The reported figure as the company itself publishes it, on the date it publishes it.
Geopolitics
Settles against a formally published text, or an official announcement issued by the parties to it. A question closes on what was published, not on how it was characterised.
Culture
Settles against an official result published by whoever administers the event, on the date it is announced. The announcement is the source; nothing earlier counts.
Weather
Settles against a named meteorological record, read at a defined station over a defined window. Both the record and the window are named in the question.
Technology
Settles against a vendor's own published release or announcement. A shipped version or a formal statement, not a rumour, a leak or a report of one.
A subject reaches the catalogue only when both halves hold: somebody plans around the outcome, and a source exists that publishes it on a schedule. Where either is missing, the subject is not listed, however interesting the question would be.
NdioLa does not list sports.
This is permanent written policy, not a restriction for the opening phase. Sports outcomes are not listed on NdioLa, and there is no roadmap on which they later are. The policy is written down so that it is a decision rather than a preference: it is not under review, and reversing it would have to be an announced change of position.
Nobody plans around it
Every question on NdioLa is an outcome somebody plans around. A rainfall season, a policy decision, an election result, a published statistic, a release date and an award announcement all qualify. A sports result does not. Its price carries no information usable outside the event itself, and a price nobody can act on is not what this venue is for.
It is where everyone already is
Sports is the crowded ground in this market, worked by a long list of established operators. Carrying it would make NdioLa a version of something Kenya already has. It would compete for a customer who is already served, and be read as one more operator rather than as infrastructure. What the platform is for would be the first thing lost.
It keeps the catalogue legible
The catalogue runs on one rule a person can hold in their head. Every question is an outcome that affects how somebody plans, and keeping that rule is worth more than the questions it costs. Sports would be the single entry that breaks it, and a catalogue that can no longer be stated in one line stops telling anyone what NdioLa is for.
Why this is infrastructure and not an application.
An application serves the people who open it. Infrastructure serves people who never do. NdioLa is built for the second case: the output of the market is a continuously updated, publicly readable price for a local risk, and that price is useful to anyone planning around the same risk whether or not they ever trade.
Nothing in Kenya currently produces that number. Forecasts exist, but a forecast has no cost attached to being wrong. A market price does, which is what makes it worth reading. Publishing one for local risks is the part of this that is infrastructure. The exchange itself is only the mechanism that produces it.
It compounds. Once a risk has a readable price, instruments can be built that reference it, and businesses can plan against it instead of guessing. That is the sense in which NdioLa is the first product of the group rather than the only one: it produces something other things can be built on.