Nume Ekeghe and Oluchi Chibuzor
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other stakeholders have urged industry leaders to enhance their investments in infrastructure, emphasising its significance in fostering inclusive growth and development.
The USAID convened industry leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs for a one-day conference to reinforce the importance of infrastructure investment in Nigeria and showcased investment opportunities in strategic sectors.
The conference with theme: “Investing in Development,” showed that private sector investment in infrastructure was a vital pathway to achieving Nigeria’s development objectives across key sectors in Nigeria.
Also, stakeholders at the event agreed that the red tape should be reduced to enable private sector aide participate in infrastructure financing.
Speaking at the event, the Chief Executive Officer of Chapel Hill Denham, Bolaji Balogun, emphasised the importance of involving professionals in delivering key infrastructural projects across various sectors of the
economy.
Balogun, called on the incoming government to prioritise infrastructure investment, saying it serves as a foundation for transforming agriculture, improving manufacturing capabilities, enhancing education, and even bolstering security measures.
Balogun added: “When you invest in infrastructure, you invest in power, transportation, digital infrastructure and energy infrastructure; what you end up doing is that you completely create a foundation for changing agriculture.”
He stressed that when infrastructure receives adequate attention it would trickle development across all sectors.
“Even basic things you and I don’t think about like security, healthcare, and education are all impacted by infrastructure. So, there are many things you can do to change an economy but the foundation of it is to improve the level of investment in infrastructure,” he added.
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer, InfraCo, Lazarus Angbazo, noted that the Presidential Infrastructure funds would continue to focus on development, construction, and operation by committing Naira equity in each of the areas.
He added: “We know that no country can build their own country using dollar currency or foreign currencies. If you look at some of our peer countries like Brazil, and Mexico, they all have an InfraCo-like institutions that are able to sort of catalyse these infrastructure projects by providing equity, long-term bond, and tax incentives.
“Part of what can be done in mobilising domestic funds in addition to providing encouragement to institutional investors; say let designate a percentage of the GDP that would be available for Debt Management Office (DMO) to provide guarantees.
“The work is to develop a rich and sustainable and ongoing pipeline of bankable projects that we need to do and providing that sort of instrument; a guarantee instrument that would provide that support is what will address the gaps in the pipeline of development.”
Acting USAID/Nigeria Mission Director, Sara Wert, who also spoke at the conference said: “The INVEST activity and the partnership between USAID and Chapel Hill Denham will attract investments that will create jobs, improve infrastructure, and drive progress in key sectors of the Nigerian economy.
“Our discussions today will impact how we can work together to enable low-carbon and resilient infrastructure in Africa.”
Participants engaged industry leaders and gained insights into emerging trends and opportunities in the sectors. They also learned from presentations on infrastructure investment opportunities in the agro-industry, digital technology, financial services, and energy and renewables sectors.
For the Group Chief Executive Officer, AFEX, Ayodeji Balogun, “the best thing that has happened to agriculture is the talents that have chosen to participate in solving the solutions in the space.
“Now we have not started seeing the gain even though productivity is still declining, contribution to GDP-to-number of people working in the industry is declining, but we expect with better macro conditions, more capital inflows to Africa and more blended-development focus investment streams that are coming up in the space.”
On his part, Managing Director, Sahel Capital, Mezuo Nwuneli said: “We need to be very aware that it is critical to invest in agricultural infrastructure to ensure we have the right food ecosystem, the right pricing system- but there is a good investment opportunity there but it is a long term economic and political stability.”
