90 business groups endorse intercontinental highway from Sicily to Cape Town via Lagos

Not less than 90 business groups around the world have endorsed the proposed intercontinental highway, known as the Europe-Africa Business corridor, that is to run from Sicily in Italy, through strategic countries including Lagos to Cape Town in South Africa.

Twenty out of the 90-business group expected to drive the gigantic project designed by a team of Italian professors are said to come from Africa. The groups are mostly societies of engineers from different countries.

This was disclosed to BusinessDay in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, by one of the professors behind the concept and design, Enzio Siviero, at the end of a three-hour business launch at the Hotel Presidential by the Rivers Entrepreneurs and Investors Forum (REIF) in honour of the two professors from Italy.

Siviero, an engineering professor and his partner, Nicola Monda, professor of architecture, were in Port Harcourt as part of an African tour, mobilising groups of professionals and investors, as well as governments, to queue behind the dream of building a business corridor between Europe and Africa, running through Sicily, Tunisia and many other countries to South Africa.

Both professors made presentation to a team of 50 carefully selected business leaders and investors in Rivers State on the prospects of building an intercontinental collaboration along the business corridor.

Siviero and Monda in their different presentations said, the corridor would also carry a rail line and would help to build cultural and religious affinity between countries and the two continents. They said the greatest asset to achieve the dream were the humans that form the two continents, while money would be secondary.

The professors said the governments of the corridor countries would play critical roles, but insisted that it is the business and professional groups that would drive the process. They also appealed to Africa to find a way to unlock its potential instead of looking up to other continents to spoon-feed her.

The outcome of the business corridor would be the emergence of a powerful business block between Africa and Europe, and later Asia, which they said, would be co-opted. The World Bank is said to be behind the project.

The project when realised is said to be capable of crashing the ever-rising cost of doing business in Nigeria and Africa, and also spike the growth of African economies. It is also said to be Nigeria’s best hope to shift away from an oil-dependent economy.

According to a team from Italy, it is when the economy is down that serious efforts must be made to expand the legs of the economy. The Business Corridor would create physical, economic and cultural bridges from Italy to South Africa. It would also form an energy highway to boost power supply and boost agriculture.

The business launch was aimed at educating the Port Harcourt business group, through the REIF to hook unto the huge project and to begin a conscious drive to push Port Harcourt to global business limelight, through private sector approach.

Declaring the launch open, REIF’s president, Ibifiri Bobmanuel, said the Business Corridor would open Africa up to Europe by road and rail, and crash the cost of moving goods to Africa, and raw materials to Europe. The project may open to Asia, and create a tripartite highway from Europe to Africa and Asia- a prospect that would tap the potential of the three continents, where there is hitech (Europe), skills (Asia) and manpower and natural resources, (Africa), which would interact to create a new economic force.

Speaking, the engineering professor, Monda, said the infrastructure to be created along the business corridor would spike business growth along the route from Sicily (Italy) to Cape Town (South Africa). He said the engineers that designed the Corridor and the bridges along the route have hooked up with the African Society of Engineers for participation. He said the fact that a Nigerian engineer is the current head of the ASE made the Italians to head to Nigeria to start building the network.

He talked about building both physical and cultural bridges between Europe and Africa, saying Africa was not only the new frontier but also the origin of man. He said this new relationship would not be about colonisation, but about helping Africa to bring out its inner will power and resources to play at equal level with Europe.

In his presentation, Siviero, an architect and engineer, said Port Harcourt was the right place to start the campaign because of what he called zeal to rise fast. He said though Lagos was the number one economy and Abuja the political capital, but Port Harcourt offered a zone with lighter traffic and huge resources to grow big.

He said Port Harcourt must develop the new models that Nigeria and Africa must copy, and urged Nigeria to demonstrate capacity to lead Africa. He said though the entire project looked huge but it was broken down to smaller units to allow each on the corridor to take up its own projects that would form the whole.

The REIF president said the coming of the Italians would also offer new opportunities to Port Harcourt businesses as some of the engineers have agreed to design delicate bridges free of charge for the Rivers State government.