Tag Archives: Finance

Oyebola: Nigeria is West Africa’s Most Viable Investment Destination

15 Jun 2015

By Obinna Chima

The Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of FBN Capital Asset Management Limited, Mr. Michael Oyebola, has highlighted Nigeria’s position as the top foreign institutional funds destination in West Africa.

He made this known in a presentation titled: “Nigeria: West Africa’s most viable destination for US institutional funds,” during the 2015 edition of the Africa Institutional Funds and Managers’ Series (AIFMS), held in New York recently.

Oyebola stated that Nigeria has a compelling investment business case, despite the socio-economic challenges she is contending with.  He noted that Nigeria continues to show great potential in core areas of interest to traditional institutional fund managers, while her burgeoning middle-class and status as Africa’s largest economy following her Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rebasing, establishes her as the sub-region’s most viable investment destination.

He also highlighted the country’s ongoing revival in agriculture, its vast and untapped power resources, a progressive financial services sector, the untold potential which remains in oil and gas, as well as a vibrant telecoms and ICT industry, among other investment-stimulating factors.  According to him, “in agriculture the investment opportunities which exist in food processing and storage facilities, crop production, and animal husbandry due to a huge domestic demand are many, while in the power sector, the nation’s gas agenda facilitates a potential for aggressive gas-based industrial growth.”

Furthermore, he noted that crucial to the successful performance of institutional fund investment from the US and other continents to Nigeria, was partnership with leading investment and asset management firms in the sub-region to ensure knowledge and expertise of the local operating environment.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Malaysia is the largest Asian investor in Africa

Three reasons why we should do business with Singapore. However, Singapore has already reached a developed nation status. Malaysia is still developing (some call it semi-developed, because, absent a few economic indicators, it has all the markings of a developed nation). Therefore, it has more in common with Nigeria. It’s also not Singapore, but Malaysia that has the largest Asian investment in Africa. It’s also Malaysia, not Singapore that sends aids and its people to help Africans. Nigeria will also benefit from how Malaysia is able to keep its cost of living so low; one example, oil prices are 60 percent cheaper in Malaysia than Singapore and Thailand.
Malaysia is ahead of China in terms of the size of its direct foreign investment (FDI) into Africa and the gap is widening. A survey of foreign investment into and out of the five BRICS countries, published on the eve of their summit in South Africa and while new Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the continent, revealed that China’s march into Africa has lagged behind the flow of cash from Kuala Lumpur. In 2011, Malaysia was third largest investor in Africa overall, only behind the United States and France. China came fourth and India fifth.
… France and the Malaysia is ahead of China in terms of the size of its direct foreign investment (FDI) into Africa and the gap is widening United States also have the largest historical stock of investments in Africa,” Reuters reported, “with Britain in third place and Malaysia in fourth, followed by South Africa, China and India.”
India has $14 billion invested in Africa; China 16 billion and Malaysia, $19.3 billion (about 24% of its FDI).

Source: Weekly Trust, April 18th 2015

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail