How do government policies and institutions affect stock market performance? As stock markets grow broader and deeper in African countries, the question becomes more critical. Government quality dynamics of corruption-control, government-effectiveness, political-stability or no violence, voice & accountability, regulation quality and rule of law are instrumented with income-levels, religious-dominations, press-freedom degrees and legal-origins to account for stock market performance dynamics of capitalization, value traded, turnover and number of listed companies. The results demonstrate a significant positive association between stock market performance measures and the quality of government institutions. These findings suggest countries with better developed government institutions would favor stock markets with higher market capitalization, better turnover ratios, higher value in shares traded and greater number of listed companies.