The UK’s Department for International Trade, in collaboration with the City of London, recently hosted over 100 Nigerian businesses and potential UK investors at an investment showcase in London, highlighting opportunities in some of the many viable projects in the West African nation across the agriculture, energy, healthcare, infrastructure and ICT sectors.
The showcase, which comes ahead of the UK-Africa Investment Summit on 20th January 2020 in London, supports the UK’s clear vision of working together with African countries and forging new investments that will create jobs and boost mutual prosperity through strong and enduring partnerships.
Held at the historic Guildhall, the event outlined progressive investment prospects in the Nigerian market today to UK investors, and brought together leading figures in the public and private sectors, investment funds and financial institutions as the UK pursues its ambition of being the largest G7 investor in Africa by 2022.
Charles Bowman, former Lord Mayor of the City of London, in his opening remarks noted that the UK is already a significant direct investor in Nigeria and a strong relationship already exists with the country and the City of London.
“Nigeria is the second largest destination of UK investment in Africa, with £5.1bn of investment stock, and one-fifth of FTSE 100 companies having some form of presence in Nigeria,” Bowman said. “In addition, total trade in goods and services between the UK and Nigeria in 2018/19 was £5.1bn, an increase of 19.3 percent from the previous year, which illustrates the size and strength of trade and investment relationship between our two countries.”
Adeniyi Adebayo, Nigeria’s minister of industry, trade and investment, said as part of his keynote address that in order to realise its national economic objectives, “the Nigerian government has begun implementing new initiatives to aggressively improve the ease of doing business and is supporting investors through wholesale reforms, tailored investor incentives, bilateral investment agreement and a pipeline of continuous opportunities”.
Harriet Thompson, UK deputy high commissioner to Nigeria, facilitated as Seso Global, Farmcrowdy, Nordica Fertility Centre, jetWest Airways, Channeldrill Resources Ltd, Century Energy Services and other Nigerian businesses presented their projects to investors from Credit Suisse, Infraco Africa, Standard Chartered, Black Rock, CDC, JP Morgan, Helios Investments, Wood Group, among others.
Other speakers included John Mahon, DIT’s director-general for exports, Yewande Sadiku, executive secretary/CEO, Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission, and Uche Orji, MD/CEO, Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
