Turn Nigeria’s successful polls into good economic policies- Say investors at WEF, Africa

The feat of a successful transition of power in Nigeria should not be underrated but this euphoria and optimism must quickly translate into business confidence and higher investment if Africa’s largest economy is to fulfill her potentials, say investors and analysts attending the on- going World Economic Forum on Africa (WEF) in Cape Town, South Africa.

 

Brushing aside global concerns of a break up, Nigeria has seen the former ruling party hand over power to the opposition in a peaceful and orderly fashion, with focus now returning to the economy which has been hit hard by collapsing revenues and foreign exchange reserves in the face of lower oil prices.

According to Razia Khan who is head of research for Africa at Standard Chartered Bank, “despite the rather smooth hand over in Nigeria, we discover that these are still very challenging times for Nigeria. There are the impact of falling oil prices, the lack of bank lending because of the concerns banks are having of the economic environment and the deeper issues like electricity and public sector salary arrears.”

Speaking to BusinessDay in Cape Town, Razia alluded to the recent report by the bank which spotlighted grave concerns about Nigeria and what could easily be quick wins for the new administration if they were to tackle them quickly.

“The first”, Khan says, “is the matter of of foreign exchange rate impact and what is happening on the interbank. When it came to this question being put to business leaders, the score was very low.

“There is also the problem with the artificial pricing of petrol products in Nigeria and the chaos this causes from time to time. It is now clear that this is unsustainable. It will pay to fix these problems in the near term and if this is done, you will begin to see move investments headed the way of Nigeria.”

The theme of this year’s forum is “then and now: reimagining Africa’s future” and it comes at a time when Nigeria appears to be missing in the top spot in a number of important rankings.

Nigeria is below Egypt and Angola in attracting foreign direct investment, Nigeria is below South Africa and Kenya in the ranking of those investing in Africa, Nigeria is missing from the list of top ten economies in Africa leveraging their human capital for development, it is not among the top ten most tourism ready economies in the continent and Nigeria is also missing from the top ten countries harnessing information technology for development.

Africa is today the second globally in attracting investment, behind only North America but participants at the forum agree that nations like Nigeria must move quickly to take advantage of this window ,for in time, investors would begin to move to another region.