The Nigeria sovereign investment authority (NSIA) on Thursday said it has received approval from the Board of Directors to raise $200 million to deepen investment and growth in the technology sector. Pius Anyiador, senior vice president and lead portfolio manager, NSIA disclosed this on Thursday at the BusinessDay Breakfast Meeting (BBM) in Abuja.
The innovation will create an ecosystem, expected to catalyze and stimulate economic activities, helping start ups, which it considers as “ engine room” for mass job creation and exponential economic growth.
The fund, according to the NSIA, is hedged on providing enabling technology space in specialized fields, such as cybersecurity and broadband connectivity, which will further drive investments and growth in the sector.
Already, the NSIA said the Board of Directors have granted approval to raise the $200m needed for the investment, while $25m seed capital has been raised.
According to Anyiador, the NSIA has added the tech project “to our list of focus areas” adding that “So far, our board recently approved a $200 million fund, we have our seed capital of $25 million.
“At NSIA, we invest by co- investing and we hope to attract other technology investors into this fund and invest continuously, but we are not waiting for them to come, we have already started in-house,” he said. The NSIA Senior Vice president also informed that the authority is developing two projects in the tech space which are the fiber and tech hub projects. In addition to technology, Anyiador said the authority has other specific areas of focus tailored to drive economic growth and impact the ordinary Nigerian.
These according to him are, Agriculture, healthcare, waterways, power, gas industrialization , and financial market infrastructure
The Senior Vice President, speaking on the Pharmaceutical sector, stated that the NSIA plans manufacturing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients for manufacturing of drugs in the country.
This, according to him, is to bring down the high cost of drugs in Nigeria, adding that, “ drugs are so expensive in Nigeria because the active ingredients are not manufactured in the country”
“ We have plans to set up a manufacturing firm to produce the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients for the Pharmaceutical firms in the country, so they can source them locally”
He said, “We have a pharmaceutical concept that has passed through the first approval phase and will be solely on manufacturing of APIs. We will not invest in the manufacturing of drugs, we have people doing that already. So we are taking a big step back to get APIs.
“As we speak right now, the concept paper has been done, we are doing a feasibility study on the type of API we want to manufacture, and once we agree on that, we will start to manufacture APIs in Nigeria. So it’s easy for Emzor, Pfizer, and others to just walk into the company and buy the APIs.”
Also speaking further on its contributions to healthcare funding, the Senior vice president said the authority is currently focusing on tertiary health care, diagnostics and medical manufacturing.
He informed that the NSIA established an oncology centre in Lagos which according to him was very instrumental during the COVID-19 pandemic as it catered for cancer patients who ordinarily may have travelled out of the country for treatment. He further disclosed that the Authority has approved the development of 23 world class diagnostic centres across the country, in addition to the two diagnostic centres that have already been established by the NSIA.
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Anyiador also disclosed that the NSIA is not particularly investing in infrastructure in the gas sector , but harnessing the gas resources that are flared. He noted that Nigeria has the 9th largest gas reserves in the whole world which are being “wasted”. On power infrastructure, Anyiador informed that the Authority is developing a 10 megawatt solar plant in Kano state. “This is the first for us in the renewable energy space, we also have two others we are looking at. We have signed all the necessary agreements and we are currently on site developing this project,” he added.
On the authority’s investment in the Agriculture space , Anyiador said one area of focus is boosting storage capacity . He decried that Nigeria does not have storage capacity which leads to wattages. “For instance, South Africa has up to 60 percent storage capacity for maize, we have less than 10 percent in Nigeria and it’s worse for perishable goods. We needed to intervene in the storage space to preserve goods for export,” he explained. He also stated that the NSIA have revamped the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative, adding that “prior to NSIA’s intervention, Nigeria’s blending plants were moribund and a lot of money was wasted on subsidy. “Today we have over 51 blending plants hiring hundreds of people,” Anyiador added. He revealed that development of the NSIA-OCP ammonia plant located in Akwa Ibom state has begun. “We have started developing, we are just in the capital right now. NSIA and OCE are bringing about $300 million, the project cost is about $1.4 billion,” he said, explaining that the plant will ensure trade balance, in terms of export. He said that about 70 percent ammonia will be exported.
The Managing Director, Businessday Media Limited, Ogho Okiti, in his paper titled “ Macroeconomic outlook” noted that there had been some unpleasant economic development in Nigeria since 2015, with the decline in oil prices.
According to him, the Nigerian economy has been faced with challenges including exchange rate pressure, domestic price pressure worsening insecurity among others.
“In Nigeria today, we have had some interesting economic development but what I’m hoping to pass on, is that all these economic development are coming together like a gathering storm and it is almost like a hurricane”
“Since 2015, Nigeria began to feel the impact of the drop in oil prices, as it experienced recession in 2016, came out in 2017 and there had been a weak but continuous growth till Q1 2020. The Q4 2019 was the highest growth since 2015. So between 2015 and 2019 the economy didn’t record any growth above the population growth rate.
“So in that period we have accumulated an unprecedented level of debt, so the Nigerian government is broke and it has implications for everyone.
Speaking on the domestic level, Okiti said the situation had created “price pressure”, adding that “every household is affected”
“We have increased poverty rate, worsening insecurity, unemployment, declining investment as well as increasing cost of living,” he said.
He explained that there was a need to contend with these challenges, especially the price pressure to address the issues of possible macroeconomic instability.
According to him, monetary rates may be pushed up within the next 2 years if price pressures remain at the same level.
“Another thing that is shaping global economic growth in the medium term, we have the Russian war but we also have the China COVID-19 confirmed cases going up.
“China has a zero policy for COVID-19 and the numbers are climbing now. So that is also shaping the outlook for the global economy and of course crude oil prices on the rise,” he said.
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