[Nigeria Business Week] Racing toward growth, partnerships, targets

This week has shown interesting developments in a wide range of sectors in Nigeria - Hospitality, Real Estate, Agribusiness, Banking, Automotive, Oil and Gas and as always, ICT remains a busy sector. About a decade ago, the Nigerian airspace was considered highly dangerous due to a series of plane crashes; the aviation industry was in a steady decline and investment confidence was at an alltime low. Not the case anymore and records prove it, showing 14.1 million passenger traffic in 2017, a marginal increase from 2016.

Not unrelated to traveling, pan-African financial institution, United Bank for Africa has introduced a lounge key airport program, a scheme that allows holders to access over 800 airport lounges around the world.

More investment is about to take place next year, with car manufacturer Peugeot, in collaboration with Aliko Dangote and some state governments, set to open an assembly plant in the country next year. On a Federal level, the government is taking an ambitious approach in the oil and gas sector, targeting 10% of the global Liquefied Natural Gas market, while NNPC rolled out plans to attract more private investments in the oil industry.

The power sector is of interest to oil conglomerate, Shell, which has committed 624MW electricity capacity to the national grid.

Also in the capital, Abuja, a deal has been made to develop over 1,000 houses for senior citizens across the country.

Agriculture is not neglected. The International Finance Corporation  is organizing a $1b debt finance for fertilizer company, Indorama, for construction and expansion of a new fertilizer line.

The ongoing World Cup competition has spurred many ICT related partnerships, as different entities are vying to provide the best streaming possibilities. Such is the collaboration between Kwesé iflix and Airtel, with other benefits agreed upon by both companies.

Cyber security remains a concern in the ICT/internet space in several african countries. South African company NEC XON is creating cyber defence operations in a few African countries precisely to that purpose, Nigeria being one of those countries, as well as Senegal and Mauritius.

An interesting note to conclude on is the survey carried out by the W Hospitality Group, in which Nigeria emerged as the leading country in West Africa as regards to hotel expansion. This bodes well for present and future investment in the hospitality industry.