Comparative Assessment of Financial Market Development in African Economies: An Integrated MCDM Framework Based on CRISUS-LODECI-WENSLO Weighting and ARTASI Ranking

Financial market development is an inherently multidimensional construct shaped by institutional, legal, market-based, and macro-financial conditions, and therefore cannot be adequately captured through single-indicator proxies. To address this complexity, this research proposes an integrated hybrid multi-criteria decision-making methodology, namely the CRISUS (CRiterion Importance based on the SUm of Squares)-LODECI (LOgarithmic DEcomposition of Criteria Importance)-WENSLO (Weights by ENvelope and SLOpe)- ARTASI (Alternative Ranking Technique based on Adaptive Standardized Intervals) framework, to comparatively assess the financial market development performance of twenty-six African economies. The evaluation structure is grounded in six criteria derived from the Absa Africa Financial Markets Index, with decision matrix values computed as arithmetic averages over the 2022–2025 period to capture persistent structural characteristics rather than cyclical fluctuations. The three weighting procedures, each operating on mathematically distinct information extraction principles, are linearly integrated to yield a composite criterion weight vector that is robust to method-specific distributional assumptions. The resulting weights identify pension fund development, legal standards and enforceability, and market depth as the dominant criteria, collectively accounting for the preponderance of cross-country performance variation. ARTASI rankings place South Africa, Mauritius, and Namibia at the top of the performance distribution, while Madagascar, DRC, and Ethiopia occupy the lowest positions. Sensitivity analysis under alternative weighting parameterizations and benchmarking against seven established MCDM methods confirm the stability and convergent validity of the proposed framework.