The Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Zone (LADOL) will in 2020 turn into a Sustainable Industrial Special Economic Zone after the launch of its circular economy next year.
Upon the launch, part of the Zone will be dedicated to incubating and supporting Nigerian entrepreneurs, providing shared offices and workshops, as well as incubation of services.
In addition, LADOL will be a platform that would be supporting the creation of new sustainable businesses that will deploy innovative solutions to today’s businesses from transport to agriculture and IT, said Amy Jadesimi, managing director of LADOL.
To benefit from this, she urged entrepreneurs to create new business models that will uniquely engineer the Nigerian market.
Jadesimi, who stated this as a keynote speaker at IE Business School’s Digital Venture Day held recently in Lagos, highlighted the importance of indigenous Nigerian private sector in creating tens of millions of new jobs needed in Nigeria.
She encouraged the audience to use the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a guide to identifying business opportunities in order to build their businesses.
“We know from 2016 report of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, ‘Better Business Better World’ that $12 trillion will be created if private sector pursues SDG, aligned and inspired business opportunities. Much of this market will be in high growth, low income countries like Nigeria,” she said.
According to her, Nigeria’s demographic dividend, young population will drive global prosperity and peace, resulting to private sector growth.
“With the right financing model and intelligence, hard work, energy and ingenuity of Nigerian entrepreneurs, within a decade, Nigeria could be transformed. Sustainability equals profitability and Nigerian market is the perfect environment for new business model to flourish,”she said.
Jadesimi commended the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for its recent moves to increase financing flowing to the real private sector. She however said that there were more that still needed to be done to encourage banks to support the real private sector.
“Nigeria is the largest underserved market in the world. To ensure that the private sector can focus on locally conceived, manufactured and deployed value added solutions, we need to collaborate,” she said.
According to her, sustainability involves building sharing economies and solutions through joint private sector lobbying of government and financial institutions.
She however pointed out that indigenous Nigerian private sector that will generate the highest returns if they are sustainable, has long been ignored by the global financing community.
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