Osinbajo Woos Investors For Nigeria, Africa

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the huge development challenges facing Nigeria and the rest of Africa present “excellent opportunities for groundbreaking investments and innovation” across the continent.

Speaking at an interactive session hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think-tank, in New York, Professor Osinbajo said it will be risky for the world to ignore Africa and its huge potentials for growth and development.

In a presentation on “Nigeria’s Economic Prospects”, the vice president based his submissions on four areas that include population and the environment in relations to climate change.

Prof Osinbajo, who was a guest at the forum, also identified the other two areas as production, especially agriculture, manufacturing and technology as well as security and the challenges of terrorism, violent Islamic extremism, social exclusion and resource conflicts.

He said happenings in these four areas within the continent would impact positively or negatively on global fortunes in the coming years, adding; “The doomsday scenario is as follows: Africa’s population grows exponentially, food production is not able to match population growth, a rise in transhuman conflicts due to shrinking vegetation and water.

“Lack of jobs and opportunity for a large poorly educated youth population, leading to aggressive illegal migration, vulnerability to extremism and, the creation of a convenient breeding ground for extremist groups and a terrorist  launch pad to the rest of the world.

“A horrifying situation indeed, and possible if in the next three decades Africa drops the ball on these four indicators.”

According to him, “Neither Africa nor the rest of the world can afford to have these scenarios playing out.”

The Vice President said as the most populous nation in Africa, Nigeria has a critical role to play in those four areas, maintaining that it is not an exaggeration saying as; “Nigeria goes, so goes Africa”.

He also said though the challenges were huge, they were excellent opportunities for ‘ground-breaking’ investments and innovation by both local and foreign players.

Prof Osinbajo said; “The mere fact that we will become the third most populous nation in the world by 2050 and the 14th largest economy, means a huge market.

“When we opened up our telecoms sector for private investment 18 years ago, many thought, ‘yes, they have a large population but not a large enough middle class to buy and use mobile phones’.

“They were wrong. MTN and Econet took the plunge, and today market penetration for mobile phones is 114.9 per cent, which technically means almost everybody has a phone.”

He said Nigeria was set to replicate the same feat in the power sector by opening it for investment in end-to-end power supply, noting that Power Africa, a USAID project, has made a commitment of 110 million Dollars between 2018 and 2023.

The fund is meant to provide transaction support to the entire electricity value-chain covering gas supply, distribution, transmission and generation activities, he explained.

“With our population, and a market-driven power sector, the next few years promise exciting prospects.

“This is also the case with other infrastructure. We are embarking on the largest investment in infrastructure in our history, welcoming private investments in concessions and projects like rail, roads, airports, and other infrastructure.”

The Vice President also stated that in agriculture, Nigeria boasts of the ninth largest stock of arable land in the world, and has become a world leader in cassava, yam, sorghum and millet production.

For him, Nigeria is on the verge of self sufficiency in paddy rice production, seeing greater interest in agriculture and the agro-allied value chain, even as he noted that aside the export market, the country’s population presents a massive and lucrative domestic market.

“Carlos, a major Mexican vegetable farmer came to Nigeria to do vegetables for export and found he was making far more money servicing the domestic market,” he said.

Equally, he said challenges in areas such as manufacturing, environment, climate change and security were investment opportunities waiting to be explored. – NAN