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Africa Investor, a leading investment magazine with focus on the African continent reported that even though South Africa is recognized as Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria far outweighed it in foreign direct investment, receiving about 16 billion US dollars in FDI between June 2009 and June 2010 to lead the pack on investment index in the entire continent. However, while most of the investment was in the oil and gas sector, other sectors have received more of lip service than real investment. It is not yet Uhuru! Agriculture has been the greatest culprit because more than 70% of Nigerian population is engaged in agriculture-subsistence agriculture-leading to huge supply gap in the food sub-sector. As a matter of fact, it is estimated that out of about 71.2 million hectares of available cultivatable agricultural land in the country, less than half is currently being utilized. This is the sector to put your funds right now. You may invest in green houses, improved seedlings for

CLOSING REMARKS ON THE OCCASION OF THE SEMINAR ON DOING BUSINESS IN ISRAEL, HELD IN LAGOS, NIGERIA ON JULY 18, 2013 Greetings! I feel humbled to be called upon to give the closing remarks on this August occasion on “Doing Business in Israel” put together by the Nigeria Israel Chamber of Commerce and Infoplus Business Information Services. Israel has been described by one of the speakers as a mission, practical and focused with know-how, new concepts and set of skills that have transformed its economy, whereby once desert areas have been transformed into agricultural fields; and the country able to feed itself and to export! As a matter of fact, Israel’s capacity for innovation has been identified as its main strength such that insecurity and other significant adverse conditions have not fazed the citizens of this great country from digging deep into research and development. The World Economic Forum recently issued its Global Competitiveness Report for 2012-13 which indica

VENTURES AFRICA – Egi MJG Float Glass, a joint venture between the Egi Community, Mara Group, JS Group and Ghani Group in River State today announced the groundbreaking for their first float glass manufacturing plant in Nigeria, which is valued at $210 million. The production facility in Rivers State which aims to produce 500 tonnes of float glass per day will cost $110 million during the first phase, and an additional $100 million during the second expansion phase. During the ceremony, Prashant Manek, Director at Mara Group, declared: “Today’s groundbreaking is a first step in making Nigeria self sufficient in terms of glass manufacturing. As a result of the strategic location and the locally available raw materials, we are highly confident that we will be able to build a world-class, cost-competitive facility.” According to Ali Siddiqui, CEO of JS Group, “since the year 2000, the global float glass industry has experienced strong growth. In particular, the industry ha

We are business facilitators, market researchers and consultants. We are Nigerians as well as Israelis. We have lived and worked in Israel and now do the same in Nigeria therefore we understand the cultural nuances in both countries. 'We speak their languages'. Coming back to Nigeria was to represent the US federal states of Missouri and California Offices of International Marketing, East Mediterranean Regional Office in Nigeria. We have since moved on to doing business in other parts of the world, leading business delegations to Singapore, China and Israel. Amongst other things, we have also contributed to doing ‘business beyond borders’ by holding a seminar on cross border trade between Nigeria and Benin Republic in collaboration with the Consulate of Benin Republic, Lagos. Recently we collaborated with the Nigeria-Israeli Chamber of Commerce to host a seminar on Doing Business in Israel. We provide market intelligence, conduct market research, do business matching, as