How we collect, verify, and publish.

Primary sourcing

All quantitative claims trace to a primary source: central banks, multilateral institutions, regulated financial filings, or national statistical offices. Secondary sources are used only for context and are flagged as such.

Sourcing hierarchy

Admissible primary documents, in order of evidentiary weight:

1. Central bank publications — BCEAO, BEAC, CBN, Bank of Ghana, ECB, Banque de France, Banco de México. Statistical bulletins, monetary policy reports, balance of payments series.
2. Multilateral institutions — World Bank KNOMAD Migration & Development Briefs, IMF Article IV reports, BIS working papers, OECD statistics, UN DESA.
3. Regulated filings — AMF/CSSF/ACPR/FCA registrations, prospectuses, RAIF / SCSp / SCPI annual reports, audited financial statements.
4. National statistical offices — INSEE, INS, ONS, NBS Nigeria, GSS Ghana, INEGI.
5. Specialist datasets — Chainalysis Geography of Crypto, Visa/Mastercard cross-border data, OpenExchangeRates, named only when methodology is public.
6. Nova surveys — quota-controlled diaspora panels, instruments available on request.

Anonymous sources are used only when the information cannot be obtained otherwise and the source faces clear professional risk. Every anonymous attribution is approved by the editor-in-chief.

Estimates

Where Nova publishes an estimate, the method, sample, and confidence bounds are disclosed alongside the figure. Estimates are versioned; revisions are dated and explained.

Corrections policy

If you spot a factual error, write to corrections@nova-observatory.com. We respond within two business days.

• Material corrections (numbers, names, causal claims) are appended in a dated note at the foot of the article and the dateModified field of the article schema is updated.
• Minor edits (typos, formatting) are made silently.
• Retractions remain at their original URL with the full original text struck through and an editor's note explaining the retraction. We do not unpublish.

Funding & independence

Nova Observatory is edited and financed by Nova France SAS and Nova Luxembourg RAIF. Editorial independence is protected by a written firewall policy: the editor-in-chief reports to a board committee that excludes anyone with revenue responsibility, and no commercial team has visibility into unpublished content. Specific conflicts (a portfolio holding relevant to a story, a commercial relationship with a named entity) are disclosed in-line at the foot of the article.

How we compute the Cross-Border Capital Index

The Cross-Border Capital Index (CBC Index) is a monthly composite tracking the cost and friction of moving capital across the corridors Nova covers. Higher values indicate cheaper, faster, better-regulated flows.

CBC = 0.30 · FXVol + 0.25 · RemΔ + 0.20 · UsurySpread + 0.15 · RegRegime + 0.10 · DiasporaSentiment

• FX volatility (30%) — annualised 30-day standard deviation of the corridor's pair, sourced from OpenExchangeRates and the relevant central bank. Inverted: lower vol = higher score.
• Remittance change (25%) — year-on-year growth of corridor volume per World Bank KNOMAD MDB, rebased quarterly.
• Usury spread (20%) — local usury cap minus Nova's effective non-resident rate, normalised across jurisdictions.
• Regulatory regime (15%) — discrete score derived from MiCA, PSAN/CASP, AIFMD II, and stablecoin status per jurisdiction (tracked in regulatory_status).
• Diaspora sentiment (10%) — rolling quarterly Nova survey, 600+ respondents, quota-controlled by residence and corridor.

The index is recomputed on the first calendar day of each month and written to capital_index. Historical values are preserved and never overwritten. Methodology revisions trigger a full backfill and are noted in the dataset's commentary field.

Nova surveys

Surveys are conducted with verified diaspora respondents under quota constraints on residence country, corridor, and age. Survey instruments are available on request.