Chinelo Anohu-Amazu Quotes

There’s been a lot of talk, and a lot of research but now it’s time for action. And how do you have this action translate properly on the continent? By very quickly, clearly, concisely, looking at the transactions themselves.

First let me say that risks do exist. It would be naive and totally idealistic for anyone to say that political risk doesn’t exist. But it exists everywhere. The point is that it’s not going to go away. What we need are the tools to manage it so that it doesn’t become a problem. What we do on the AIF side is to ensure that we unlock these bottlenecks and sometimes it’s a political bottleneck, sometimes it’s a policy bottleneck. Sometimes it’s a data or business intelligence bottleneck because you can’t invest if you don’t understand your terrain, if you don’t have reliable numbers.

With the AIF, which is a flagship initiative of the African Development Bank along with seven other founding partners, we are preparing projects for bankability and helping projects progress through the different steps, the next one being raising capital and once that is done also working to unlock the bottlenecks that can cause some deals to not reach closure.

The same principles that we discussed earlier still need to be applied to these sectors. Thinking about scale, structuring projects properly, creating awareness around the impact and upside.

It’s a start, we’ll need a lot more, but this is something that is very exciting to us at the Africa Investment Forum, because it clearly charts a path where we can have a collaborative effort and ensure that deals on the continent have fruition.

The Africa Investment Forum has been supporting the African Continental Free Trade Area through the Forum’s parent institution, the African Development Bank.

I think there needs to be a paradigm shift from the way we look at collaboration.

The Lagos to Abidjan corridor highway project has been well documented and it’s fully subscribed – the road, the rail connection. So, now we are working on the next step which is logistics, storage, warehousing along this corridor. That’s what the boardrooms will be focusing on during the AIF. Making transactions happen and getting real investor interest in critical projects that will help drive transformation and development.

Africa is increasingly getting tired of asking for aid when in all honesty we can trade. And that is what we’re now looking to provide at the Africa Investment Forum, a flagship initiative of the African Development Bank, where both domestic and international investors who are looking to invest for profit, while fulfilling a need, are mobilised to finance projects.

The homemaker aspect of a woman’s life teaches me one thing and that’s to joggle and manage different things at the same time.

This is something we incredibly proud of and when we talk about women in business, we’re helping make it a reality. We’re helping create scale and impact. This year, mining especially what are termed green minerals. We have many technology projects and also projects around logistics.

We are uniquely placed to overcome all of these different items. We work with every government on the continent. So we can help smooth out issues around policy through discussions and sensitisation and through reforms. We also have proprietary data through the African Development Bank.

It is always incumbent on the project sponsors and the advisors to structure the deals in a manner that you accompany the interests of the country you operate in. That’s what differentiates success and frustration.

But we want to look at it more than just an athlete or a singer. We are looking to creating the framework so that we monetise the IP. Others are currently making money from our talent.

Africa is getting tired of receiving aid, adding that it would be more beneficial for the continent to take charge of its future.