AFK vs XSOE

AFKDVanEck Africa Index ETF

XSOEAWisdomTree Emerging Markets ex-State-Owned Enterprises Fund

In short

AFK Africa barely registers inside a standard emerging-markets fund. AFK makes it the whole trip: a 2008-vintage index fund holding roughly 80 African companies and tracking the MVIS GDP Africa Index.

XSOE One screen, applied hard: if a government owns more than 20% of a company, XSOE leaves it out. What is left is emerging markets minus the state champions, with country weights pushed back toward the standard EM mix.

Stated mandate

AFK The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the MVIS® GDP Africa Index.

XSOE The fund seeks to track the investment results of emerging-market companies that are not state-owned enterprises, defined as companies with no more than 20% government ownership.

Why people hold it

• AFK One ticker, one continent: roughly 80 companies tracking the MVIS GDP Africa Index rather than a single-country wager.
• Live since 2008, so it has traded through commodity booms, currency shocks and multiple global selloffs. Rare longevity for a market this hard to reach.
• Moderately traded for a frontier-flavored corner of the market, so building or unwinding a position is not an expedition.

• XSOE The 20% government-ownership cutoff is an index rule, not a manager's judgment call, and the fund has run on it since its 2014 launch.wisdomtree.com
• 0.32% a year, under the typical fund in its emerging-markets peer group, for a screen most broad EM funds never apply.
• After the state-owned names come out, the index pushes country weights back toward where they started, so it stays a filtered EM portfolio rather than a country bet.wisdomtree.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund spread across roughly 800 stocks, and it has tracked its index closely.

Worth knowing

• AFK 0.76% a year sits well above the median for its emerging-markets peer group, and broad EM index peers like VEXC and BKEM charge a small fraction of that.
• A concentrated regional slice: roughly 80 stocks exposed to currency moves, commodity prices and single-country politics, a narrower base than a diversified EM fund.
• Distributions land annually or semiannually, not quarterly, so any cash arrives in lumps.

• XSOE Cheaper broad EM shelf-mates exist (BKEM at 0.11%, XCEM at 0.16%). The screen is what you are paying the difference for.
• Government stakes cluster in banks and energy in EM, so removing them shifts the sector mix toward private-sector names. Expect it to behave differently from a plain EM index.wisdomtree.com
• No country is excluded, so China stays in the mix, unlike ex-China peers VEXC and XCEM. It also sits among the more volatile funds in its peer group.

Full AFK profile⁠

Full XSOE profile⁠