Category: Misc

When young talents lead innovation and development in Africa

“Solving Africa’s complex challenges will require innovative solutions including those developed by young inventors from the African continent. It is important that we create the necessary environment to discover them.”

Sixteen young African investors weree recently shortlisted as finalists of the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation awarded by the Royal Academy of Engineering.  While the overall winner and three runners up will receive cash funding, all the finalists will receive training and the mentoring they need to scale up their inventions and ultimately translate them into commercial products. The inventions that range from a vertical farm to an online vaccination platform to a device that can convert air into drinking water using solar technology, are bound to deliver practical solutions to Africa’s challenges, including food insecurity.

Indeed, Africa’s recurrent challenges can benefit from many inventions coming off the African continent. Moreover, Africa stands to make more headways when its young people, who represent 60 per cent of its current population, take the lead.

But to pave way for many more inventions from Africa’s young minds, the continent must invest in creating an environment that makes it easy to discoverer these inventors. So how can the African continent pave the way so that many more young inventors are discovered?

Beginning at a young age, when students are attending elementary and high schools, the African education system should make room for young students to be creative, problem solvers and critical thinkers. Currently, the education system, in many countries, including my native country Kenya, and South Africa, is poor quality and mostly focuses on content mastery. I know. The primary and high school I attended in Kenya, for example, focused on teaching theories and materials we needed to pass our national examinations. None of the teachers ever challenged my peers and me to think and create. It was all about mastering the contents and regurgitating them back in the exams. Further, we also lacked other resources including textbooks, libraries, science labs and other resources to help create a conducive environment.

Across Africa, stakeholders investing in education operate under the assumption that passing national examinations gauged by the grades students get is clear evidence that investments in education have paid off. The caveat to this approach is that it does not necessarily prepare students to be inventors or problem solvers and to meaningfully participate in developing our global world.

Moving forward, if Africa wants to reap the dividends of inventions by African students and its young minds, African schools should adopt action-oriented teaching approaches that hone critical thinking skills, creativity and innovation. Africa’s young minds should consistently be challenged to identify local problems, seek out relevant information and resources, and to design authentic plans and solutions to solve the challenges they have identified.

Once discovered, future inventors must be supported through training and mentoring. They must also be funded. Doing so will allow them to fully develop their inventions and translate them into products that offer solutions to the challenges many African citizens face.

The Royal Academy of Engineering prize of mentoring and training support and funding will definitely allow these innovators to translate their inventions into products and to scale up and widely disseminate them. The good news is that, presently, across Africa, there are several programs including The Anzisha Prize, Made in Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme and the Innovation Prize for Africa that are actively supporting, mentoring and funding  young African inventors.  This needs to continue.

Moreover, as we aim to pave the way for many African inventors to rise up, while strengthening the overall African innovation ecosystem, we must protect these ideas and ensure that people adhere to intellectual property rights. Before the young inventors’ ideas are shared, they should have the opportunity to trademark and protect them. At the moment, many African countries, research institutions, and universities and other institutions where inventions are born do not understand quite well how to manage intellectual property assets including knowing the available options when they want to protect and translate their inventions into commercial products for national, regional and international markets.

Eventually, when these inventions are translated into products, governments should create market opportunities for their products to ensure that they thrive. For example, government hospitals can buy and install the vertical gardens in hospitals, and these could be used to grow the food to feed patients. The Kenyan Government could use the Chanjo Plus online vaccination platform and roll it out across the country. Further, these inventors must be funded so that they can build industries that further support the production of the products they have created. Such support would further lead to economic empowerment and job creation by the youth and for the youth.

Solving Africa’s complex challenges will require innovative solutions including those developed by young inventors from the African continent. It is important that we create the necessary environment to discover them. Once discovered, we must nurture the inventors, celebrate them, support, and fund their ideas all the way, until they have products and companies to manufacture these products. It is the right thing to do.

Written by Dr Esther Ngumbi,  a distinguished post doctoral researcher at the Entomology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is also a food security fellow with the Aspen Institute New Voices.

Ethiopia to allow privatisation of Ethiopian Airlines, telecoms

Ethiopia will open its national carrier Ethiopian Airlines and state-owned telecom company to investors for the first time by selling minority stakes in the two firms.

The move is part of a wider effort by Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to reform East Africa’s fastest growing economy, which is dominated by the state. Ahmed, in power since March 2018, has already reduced the role of Ethiopia’s powerful military in construction and similar projects, and lifted a state of emergency introduced after anti-government protests threatened to engulf the nation.

The news will excite private domestic and foreign investors who have long targeted the East African country of more than 100m people for major investment. Ethiopian Airlines is Africa’s largest and most profitable large-scale airline serving almost 70 cities worldwide from the capital, Addis Ababa, and it recently reached a fleet of 100 aircraft.

The government will also dispose of equity in the carrier, along with Ethio Telecom, Ethiopian Electric Power, and the Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise.

Political Reform

The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition, in power since 1991, has long supported deep state involvement in the economy, but the EPRDF said that Ethiopia needed economic reforms to sustain rapid growth and boost its exports. The changes in the East African country have come following nearly four years of political unrest triggered by government plans to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa into the Oromia region, which is home to the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethno-national group.

The Oromo protesters expanded into calls for greater political reforms including the release of political prisoners and socioeconomic rights for the Oromo, who make up more than 34% of the population, and the Amhara, Ethiopia’s second-largest ethnic group. Both ethnic groups have long complained that they have been marginalised by the Tigrayans who, despite only accounting for 6% of the population, hold most influential positions in the government, economy and security.

The protests eventually led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Ahmed, who belongs to the Oromo ethnic group, has vowed to enact reforms to make the economy more inclusive and he has also released some political prisoners. The opening up of the airline and telecoms industry is another step towards achieving his stated goals.

source: Africa Business Magazine

Kenya launches oil exportation plan

Kenya’s plans to join the league of oil exporters finally became reality, after president Uhuru Kenyatta flagged off trucks loaded with oil from Lokichar basin in Turkana northwestern Kenya, destined for the port city of Mombasa, 1000 km away.

Over 100 trucks will haul some 2,000 barrels of oil per day, under the Early Oil Export Scheme (EOPS). The trucked oil will be stored at an oil refinery until the stockpile reaches at least 400,000 barrels.

The transportation was delayed for almost a year due to a row between the national government and the county government of Turkana over revenue sharing. However, a deal was reached last month.

According to the agreement, 75 percent of revenues will go to the national government, 20 percent to Turkana county government and 5 percent to the host community in Lokichar.

British firm Tullow discovered commercial oil reserves estimated at 750 million barrels in Turkana in 2012.

A $1.1 billion pipeline will be constructed between Lokichar to the ongoing Lamu port as the east African nation ramps up production to full capacity by 2022.

source: africanews.com

The oil and gas sector has not been an easy one to operate in these last three years. A number of local companies have suffered from overpaying for assets when the price of oil was much higher, with a number of banks burnt by overexposure to the sector.

Excess supply driven largely by the rise in shale production in the US has led to a fall from the giddy heights of $140/barrel a decade ago. The advent of electric cars and a general shift to renewable energy, experts predict, will also make its use less and less likely.

However this is not the view held by Segun Adebutu, founder and chairman of Petrolex who has plans of investing over $5bn to build a fully integrated oil and gas operation in Ogun state, some 150 miles east of Lagos. His rationale is simple.

Right now Nigeria – and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa – imports most of the refined products it consumes and the transition to renewables will take a lot longer than we expect it to. “Oil and gas are cheaper than every other option at this moment,” he says, “and I don’t see anything drastically changing for the next quarter century as a cycle.”

Ambition runs in the family
Adebutu comes from a well-to-do family in Nigeria, a family of businessmen with entrepreneurship at its very heart.

Adebutu’s older brother has one of the largest oil palm plantations in West Africa and another brother runs a pig farm. His father, Kensington Adebutu, founded the country’s most successful lottery and opened its first casino.

He had competitors but his business stood the test of time. He was renowned for having built a business on strong fundamentals that would outlast a generation. Those are the values he passed on to his children and the ambitions of his son Segun: to build an oil and gas company to compete with the global international oil companies and outlive him.

Largest of its kind
Adebutu has invested over $330m (a hybrid of equity and debt) in the tank farm, a 300m litre storage facility, the largest of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. The investment was in local currency, which was his saving grace.

Unlike the upstream business that is linked to the global price of the commodity, the tank farm and his planned mid and downstream operations are less exposed to the price of oil. It’s a margins business he says.

He has secured an agreement with the NNPC (Nigeria’s state owned oil company) for distribution and storage, and given his own needs (he will have 50 petrol stations by the end of the year with a target of 350 by 2022) he knows that he will have to build more capacity. In any case for him it’s a no-brainer.

He grew up in the Apapa port area which handles an estimated 50% of all Nigeria’s imports. The port was built to handle 34,000 tonnes monthly, and today it is congested and the infrastructure dilapidated he says. The strategic location of his tank farm will enable transporters to come and load their goods without having to deal with the congestion around Apapa, and the ensuing waiting times.

The tank farms will store PMS and DPK (the petrol we pump into our cars and the kerosene for household use and also airplanes), two products that are currently imported solely by the NNPC. He is targeting storage facilities of 1.2bn litres: 600m litres for ‘clean’ products (refined goods) and 600m litres of crude (that he’ll either buy from international suppliers or local crude).

The plan is to build a local refinery that will be able to refine 250,000 barrels a day. On top of this, he is building a fertiliser plant and a power station to power these operations but also with an option to sell the excess to the national grid. All this requires developing infrastructure such as building the roads to this “city”, a 13,000 hectare facility, as well as building a port terminal for the barges to berth and reload. Timeline for all this: everything should be up and running by the end of 2019, except the refinery, which will take two years longer.

Financing the project
This greater plan will bring total investments in the region of $5.7bn. The first part of the project he says was financed using local banks. The second part will require international financing, most likely through an Asian partner – an announcement will be made in March, he says.

As many of the banks in Nigeria have suffered losses because of their exposure in the oil and gas sector, were they still willing to lend to the project? First of all, he explains, his business is not directly linked to the price of oil.

He may have started off trading oil like many of the entrepreneurs that operate in the sector, but what he is investing in is in mid and downstream, that is storing, refining and petrol stations. For him the maths are simple: “South Korea has a population of 52m and they refine 3m barrels a day,” he says “of which they consume 1m and export 2m. We are 183m growing at 7% a year. Today there are 15m vehicles and this is only going to increase.”

And he is confident that the feasibility studies around his whole business, conducted by a number of consultants such as Wood Mackenzie and others, are conservative if anything when you look at the growth figures both in terms of local consumption and population growth.

The numbers stack up
When asked about Dangote’s own refinery which plans to process 650,000 barrels a day, he says that the West African market is big enough to absorb much more than what their combined refineries will produce. Given that a barrel is some 160 litres and he estimates that Nigeria consumes some 53m litres of PMS and 120m of gasoil (for generators) daily, the numbers do start to stack up.

What about his outlook for Nigeria? He thinks that confidence is returning. He feels that, despite what one reads in the press, the current administration has made it easier to do business, reducing red tape and bureaucracy. “You stop the rot and then you build,” he says.

What next?
With his plans being completed around 2022, what next for him? He thinks he’ll have his hands full for the next 5–10 years with these projects. He anticipates an IPO in the next “four to five years” and in any case that this project is all about building a legacy: “You find most businesses in Nigeria have a lifespan of 15–20 years. My [father’s] brand is the only brand of his set of friends that’s still existing today. That’s what I want with Petrolex. I want to do it properly; I want to do it right.”

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Melhor online casino com deposito minimo 1 EURO Portugal

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Nos últimos 3 anos, os sítios de jogo têm-se tornado cada vez mais comuns. As organizações modernas estão a prestar mais atenção às diferentes ofertas de bónus, géneros de jogos e outros pontos de jogo. Existem mais de 5 tipos de pagamento diferentes, e foi desenvolvido um grande número de métodos de comunicação de casino. Estes são métodos praticamente inteligentes para interessar os clientes, uma vez que estes estão entusiasmados com o serviço. Embora, alguns utilizadores possam por vezes ter dificuldade em escolher uma instituição em particular para jogar. É quando os recursos informativos de revisão do casino vêm em socorro: CasinoReal.pt, AskGamblers, Trustpilot e outros.

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1. Descobrir se o casino tem uma licença apropriada

O facto de um casino online ter uma licença legal estabelecida é da maior importância, pois este acto digital significa que o jogador está seguro e em caso de qualquer disputa a pessoa terá a possibilidade de contactar a autoridade competente. Em Portugal, o SRIJ (Servicos de Regulacao e Inspecao de Jogos), que foi criado após a legalização dos casinos terrestres em 1989 e dos casinos online em 2015, é considerado como um organismo deste tipo. A legalidade da licença também dá o entendimento de que as poupanças financeiras dos jogadores não serão perdidas e que serão mantidos padrões adequados de protecção de caçadores de bónus, jogo responsável e transparência.

Vale também a pena mencionar que a legislação portuguesa sobre o jogo significa que as empresas estrangeiras também podem fornecer serviços de jogo a cidadãos portugueses. Para tal, devem obter uma licença especial SRIJ ou, em alternativa, fornecer uma licença de um dos reguladores internacionais (MGA, Curaçau). O colunista do casino Antonio Matias recomenda vivamente o estudo em detalhe dos termos e condições dos casinos online antes de começar a jogar.

2. avaliação dos códigos promocionais e dos diversos bónus acumulados entre o mercado português de casinos online

O melhor de escolher um casino bom e de confiança é que são normalmente os códigos promocionais que contam. A generosidade e criatividade dos muitos bónus de boas-vindas é surpreendente. E os clubes de jogo portugueses legais proporcionam uma abundante e boa selecção de diferentes bónus. Pode tirar partido de grandes bónus de depósito, onde lhe serão oferecidos para multiplicar o seu primeiro depósito no casino. Ou há a possibilidade de contar com dinheiro em espécie ou sem depósito freespins, onde receberá ofertas gratuitas do casino de uma só vez. Basta criar uma conta no site de jogo em que está interessado e confirmar os seus dados.

Se a oferta ou promoção de um casino pode ser uma boa razão para aderir ao site, as suas promoções regulares são basicamente a razão pela qual um cliente vai continuar a jogar aqui.

Além disso, o que mais é normalmente avaliado num clube de jogo antes de o designar o melhor, que bónus e códigos promocionais fornecem: Bónus VIP, freespins de casino, programa VIP. Por vezes, os bónus são também oferecidos na disponibilidade de casinos ao vivo.

Os pacotes de boas-vindas são a primeira coisa imediatamente apreciada em qualquer website. A maioria dos portais dão-lhe incentivos financeiros para se inscrever, geralmente triplicando o seu primeiro depósito para um montante específico.

As análises também se concentram em saber se o casino oferece rotações gratuitas. São uma excelente introdução ao jogo e dão ao utilizador um incentivo adicional para se manter envolvido.

Os programas VIP são uma das melhores opções para um site de jogo para mostrar a uma pessoa o seu apreço pelas suas escolhas. Por outras palavras, bónus ou presentes semelhantes concebidos especificamente para si.

Cada casino online tem algo e oferece aos jogadores vários bónus interessantes. À medida que a competição se torna cada vez mais feroz com o tempo, quanto maior for o número de ofertas, mais interessantes serão os convidados. A tabela mostra as conhecidas plataformas de jogo portuguesas e os seus bónus em 2023:

Bacana PlayO Bacana Play é um jogo de casino 100% português! Há uma opção para jogar a dinheiro real a partir de 5 EUR.150% de bónus + 150 rotações grátis! Agora aqui no estabelecimento de jogo é um *2 bónus sem depósito se estiver no jogo por mais de 3 horas.
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Quando procura um bónus dos clubes de jogo portugueses na tabela da página CasinoReal.pt, está protegido pelas leis de jogo portuguesas. Devido aos sérios requisitos de bónus, é-lhe garantido um número máximo de passes. Isto torna os termos e condições de bónus muito transparentes.

Por outras palavras, se o bónus exigir uma aposta x10, o utilizador deve apostar o bónus 10 vezes, e só então o jogador pode retirar os seus ganhos. O bónus de 100 euros tem de ser apostado 10 vezes, o que significa que um mínimo de 1000 euros tem de ser apostado antes que este montante possa ser retirado. Preste atenção às condições da oferta de bónus. Este é um ponto importante.

3. Classificação dos clubes de jogo por jogos e criadores que oferecem aos jogadores portugueses

É importante notar que qualquer estabelecimento de jogo é classificado graças a uma tabela de classificação, dependendo das slot machines que oferecem. A disponibilidade de uma variedade de jogos de alta qualidade, bem como de operadores fiáveis, é uma enorme vantagem.

Os jogadores são listados como um dos jogos de casino bastante populares. Quanto mais e maior for a sua abundância, mais curioso é o utilizador que escolhe um ou outro estabelecimento de jogo. Na maioria dos casinos online, os jogadores podem participar em salas de póquer ao vivo e virtuais com outros jogadores. Sem ter de sair de casa, todos têm a opção de ganhar jogos emocionantes, escolhendo entre uma grande variedade de opções.

Na maioria dos clubes de jogo portugueses encontrará sempre uma secção ao vivo. Aqui pode jogar em tempo real com os croupiers. Roleta, blackjack e bacará, craps, questionários e rodas da fortuna chamados game shows estão todos disponíveis nos directórios ao vivo.

Uma grande percentagem dos sites de jogos ostenta produtos de jogos que foram criados por empresas de desenvolvimento apenas para eles. Quer sejam slots ou jogos de casino ao vivo, dão ao cliente a oportunidade de experimentar algo versátil que não pode ser encontrado em recursos alternativos.

Os maiores sites de casinos portugueses colaboram com uma enorme abundância de fornecedores que actualizam constantemente o seu catálogo com novos lançamentos para satisfazer todos os gostos e tendências prevalecentes em todo o mundo. Estes tendem a ser estes criadores como; Wazdan, Push Gaming, Tom Horn, 3 Oaks, Big Time Gaming, EGT, Rogue.

4. Avaliar os casinos pelos instrumentos de pagamento de que dispõem

É de grande importância oferecer aos seus visitantes condições justas e um processamento rápido dos pagamentos. Estas duas opções fazem uma imagem adequada aos utilizadores do casino e encorajam-nos a mostrar mais interesse. Isto também desempenha um papel indubitável na avaliação.

Os clubes de jogo modernos em Portugal estão também a utilizar novas ferramentas de depósito. Ferramentas como a Visa e Mastercard estão naturalmente na liderança, embora cada vez mais clientes prefiram agora utilizar carteiras digitais como a Apple Pay, Neteller, MultiBanco e outras.

O feedback de utilizadores experientes sobre casinos portugueses também varia. Alguns preferem PayPal e Skrill, enquanto outros são desconfortáveis com as transferências de moeda via MBWay. É por isso que ao ler as opiniões de utilizadores reais, deve também prestar atenção ao facto de que todos gostam de levantamentos e depósitos à sua própria maneira. Algumas pessoas escrevem críticas de tal forma que o casino parece ser um recurso miserável. Embora, possa ser trivial porque a pessoa não gostou do método de transferência devido a taxas não rentáveis. Antes de retirar dinheiro, dever-se-ia, de qualquer forma, olhar para os termos e condições de retirada. É também importante estar ciente do que o serviço de jogo é o depósito mínimo. A taxa % de levantamento depende também disto.

5. Classificação dos casinos por ranhuras com a RTP

RTP (Return to Player) é a percentagem, que é representada como o montante de financiamento que é devolvido a uma pessoa durante um jogo, do montante total de dinheiro apostado por todos os utilizadores do jogo. Os casinos e os vendedores são obrigados por lei a declarar a RTP.

Quanto mais alto for o RTP, mais inclinada será a máquina de jogo. Esta informação da RTP pode ser encontrada no separador de introdução de qualquer jogo, no web casino da sua escolha, ou na página de descrição do operador.

6. Apoio aos jogadores em casinos portugueses

As plataformas de jogo que conseguiram cuidar de um excelente apoio aos seus jogadores também recebem um maior reconhecimento. Desta forma, os jogadores sabem que serão imediatamente ajudados em qualquer dificuldade. A comunicação com os utilizadores, os tempos de resposta, os métodos de comunicação, etc., reflectem-se na impressão geral do casino online.

7. Aplicação móvel

Numa altura em que a maioria dos clientes portugueses está a utilizar os seus gadgets móveis para jogar em clubes e máquinas de jogo, é muito importante ter a melhor aplicação que satisfaça as suas necessidades. Uma aplicação de buggy que leva muito tempo a carregar irá aborrecer o utilizador desde os primeiros segundos e é mais provável que este procure outra coisa. Assim, ter uma versão móvel do casino fiável e actualizada é também uma consideração importante ao escolher o melhor portal. Alguns clubes de jogo já escrevem uma cláusula nos termos de registo de que a utilização da versão móvel está disponível com um dispositivo, o mais tardar até 2018. Preste atenção a isto!

8. Como combater o vício nos clubes de jogo portugueses?

Um estabelecimento de jogo de confiança relembra sempre os utilizadores do clube de jogo responsável e medido, fornecendo todas as ferramentas importantes para deixar claro que o jogo é puramente por diversão. Para este fim, o casino utiliza uma série de ferramentas, tais como limites de tempo, limites financeiros e económicos, o direito de eliminar um perfil ou proibir uma conta durante 3, 6 ou 9 horas. Se, contudo, alguns dos jogadores não forem suficientes, os casinos oferecem a oportunidade de obter ajuda de certas organizações (Jogo Responsavel, NCPG, Gamblers Anonumous).

A fim de poder avaliar objectivamente as páginas web de jogos, a equipa CasinoReal.pt utiliza detalhes diferentes e multifacetados nos seus parâmetros. Os peritos concentram-se no licenciamento, na acumulação de bónus e nas promoções que os casinos fornecem aos utilizadores, bem como aos seus criadores de jogos.

Para concluir, em CasinoReal.pt encontrará sempre uma avaliação competente para o ajudar a escolher o estabelecimento de jogo certo para si. Portanto, vale a pena saber que o jogo é bom num website onde pode pesquisar rapidamente a informação. Não se esqueça que o entretenimento de jogos de azar não é uma forma adicional de rendimento. É uma opção para qualquer pessoa ter um tempo de lazer interessante em 2023!

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Africa: Scaling Up Required to Address Urgent Infrastructure Demand – AFC’s Andrew Alli

INTERVIEW

The African Finance Corporation (AFC) which was established to help bridge Africa’s huge infrastructure gap, has made investments totaling more than $4.5 billion in a decade of operations. In an interview with AllAfrica’s Bunmi Oloruntoba and Reed Kramer during this month’s Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, CEO Andrew Alli outlined that corporation’s strategy for scaling up to address Africa’s major infrastructure

 Give us a quick overview.

The Africa Finance Corporation is an African multilateral organization that is tasked with financing infrastructure projects in five sectors. These are power, transportation, telecommunications, heavy industry and natural resources. In addition to financing projects, we also provide various types of advisory services. We aim to catalyze as many new projects as possible across the continent. We have a balance sheet of approximately $4 billion.

Where do you source the capital?

Initial equity capital came from a number of shareholders. Our biggest is the Nigerian Government through the Central Bank of Nigeria. They own about 42% of AFC’s equity. There various financial institutions which own the bulk of the rest, and we have a 10% shareholder which is an industrial company. That’s our equity base.

To address the shortage of ‘bankable’ projects, AFC is developing expertise.

We started off with a billion dollars of equity through retained earnings. That has grown to about 1.3 billion. We’re lucky enough to have an A3 credit rating, which is the second highest for a financial institution rating in Africa. This gives us a good access to the capital markets. We raise Eurobonds – we did one earlier this year. We raised a Sukuk (Islamic bond) earlier this year. We borrow in the commercial market, and we also borrow from other DFI’s particularly the international ones – DFI’s meaning Development Finance Institutions.

How difficult is it to raise the capital you need?

It’s always a problem to obtain capital. But we started off well capitalized, and we’ve been prudent in how we managed the business. Now we’ve got a very solid 10-year track record as well.

What role is AFC fulfilling that other multilateral finance institutions are not?

At the time we were founded, we were the only African institution with a focus solely on infrastructure financing, albeit with a rather broad definition of infrastructure. It’s important to have an organization that is devoted to infrastructure because it’s quite a difficult asset class.

For example, because we focus on infrastructure, we have developed expertise in project development. One of the reasons there aren’t that many infrastructure projects happening is a lack of skill and a lack of resources to do project development – taking a project from an idea through to where it can be financed. There are organizations helping with feasibility studies, but feasibility is, maybe, one-tenth of the process.

Once you know a project is feasible, you have to agree on the concession. You have to do the environmental studies and raise the financing, et cetera. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and we focused on this project development early.

We’ve also done a few pioneering things. We started off doing projects on our own, then we brought in other partners. We started financing third party developers. We closed a big project in Ghana called Cenpower which is a 350-megawatt power station where we were one of the lead developers. More recently we’ve been instrumentally in setting up the Africa Project Development Association  – an association of power developers.

Also, unlike some other entities who are in the infrastructure space, we do equity as well. We take equity stakes in projects. We also do mezzanine financing, which you will find is less common.

How much investment is needed for infrastructure across Africa?

The estimates for the infrastructure financing gap range from $30 to $50 billion per annum. This includes projects that are ‘bankable’ as well as those that generally must be undertaken by governments, because they serve the public interest but don’t generate revenue. There are lot of infrastructure projects that have developmental impact, but have to have government funding because they aren’t commercial. Rural roads, for example, have to be done on the balance sheet of the government. They don’t produce a return for an investor.

We participate in projects that we expect to pay us back. In my view, it is better for governments to let the private sector do everything the private sector can. In our case, we bring in other investors and typically leverage three to five times what our own financing is. Roughly speaking, our four and a half billion translates into something between $15 billion and $20 billion worth of projects.

We continue to scale up, but we have constraints. One is the availability of well-structured, bankable projects. They’re not that many, unfortunately, which is why we got into project development in the first place. Secondly, obviously you need to be measured in how you scale up as a financial institution anyway. We started at a billion dollars, and we’re now at about $4 billion. We done that in 10 years and we expect to continue to grow.

What’s the governance structure of AFC?

The ultimate decision-making is the shareholders. Day-to-day, we have a board of directors – a number of them represent our larger shareholders, and we have one independent director. We’ll probably get another one soon. The board has three subcommittees: risk and investment, audit, and board nominations and governance. There’s a management team, which has an executive committee – a standard governance structure.

Does progress – or lack of progress – towards regional integration impact what you do?

Regional integration makes bigger markets, which makes for more healthy economies, more healthy companies. But it doesn’t always help with infrastructure projects. Power is one where you can get good economies of scale, and we’re seeing the development of regional power pools. But a lot of projects we are involved in don’t have a regional aspect – roads in-country, ports, et cetera. With regional projects, the complexity goes way up. You’ve got different political objectives, different regulations, different philosophies. Bringing that all together is difficult. If it really makes a lot of sense to do it, then of course, you should. But if you can do a project based on a single country then that’s where you should start.

How do you assess the Chinese role in infrastructure development?

A lot of it is orthogonal to what we do, because the Chinese have typically followed a model of government-to-government financing. They are helping governments finance the large chunk of projects that are not commercially bankable but are important. Now and again, they stray into the private sector, but largely that’s what they’ve done. It’s been roads, stadia, railway lines – things like that. We find them quite complementary. We have such a large need in Africa that I welcome funds from any source. As long as it’s well managed, Chinese funding is just as good as funding from anywhere else.

What are your biggest obstacles?

There is the gap between the obvious need for infrastructure investment in Africa and the lack of projects in which to invest. The bottleneck is not money; it’s actually lack of projects. There are a lot of people who would like to invest in infrastructure in Africa, but the projects are just not there. So we spend a lot of time and effort trying to help develop new projects.

We would like to see privatizing of government assets. Countries have done this to differing degrees and with differing levels of success, but there’s a lot more that can be done in that area – which ought to be done. A lot of countries haven’t privatized their ports – ports are imminently privatizable – or airports.

 Africa needs ‘platform companies’ with large enough balance sheets to tackle big projects.

Power is also privatizable. But in many countries in Africa – again, not all – the power utility typically is government-owned. Typically, those are loss-making or not very profitable and therefore are not bankable. If I am financing a power station, I’m looking at credit worthiness to determine if I can finance a power station. If the utility buying the power is weak, it doesn’t make it impossible, but it makes it difficult. You have to spend a lot of cost and effort to credit enhance the state utility in order to finance that power station. Those are the some of the structural issues that I would mention.

Another issue [we face] is that the African private sector doesn’t have experience or, often, the financial resources to develop a large-scale project. We’ve been looking at how we can help to break the logjam in the power sector. If you look across Africa, there are very few large companies – companies with turnover of more than half a billion dollars. That’s a big problem because a lot of projects are done by large companies.

So we are creating a large power company by combining a number of power assets. Cabeolica in Cape Verde is the first commercial wind farm in Africa. We have Cenpower in Ghana. We’re merging those with the power assets of Harith, which is a South African fund manager. See: AFC and Harith Merge Assets To Bring Power To Africa.

The merger will provide reliable energy to over 30 million Africans in six countries with a capacity of some 1500 megawatts. We are close to making this happen, and we want to create more of these – what we are calling ‘platform companies’.

Upgrading of Mbinga – Mbamba Bay road (66 km) to bitumen standard

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Agrius
Agrius

Supporting infrastructure projects on the New Silk Road

An entrepreneur’s travels from China to Africa

Our speaker Bruno Lhopiteau, founder of China’s largest maintenance consultancy Siveco, will share his experience developing a unique business along the New Silk Road. Based on a long experience of “maintenance with Chinese characteristics”, Siveco has developed a specific approach to address the needs of infrastructure projects in China through the utilization of technological tools. Since 2008 the company enjoys a growing export business, working alongside Chinese construction companies building power plants in Southeast Asia, the Middle-East and… Africa. The presentation will show how early experience in the booming Chinese infrastructure market has led Siveco to support, among other projects in Africa, one of continent’s most ambitious energy program: to meet the increasing demand for electricity, the Algerian government has launched a massive investment program, with an additional 8,400MW of capacity to be connected to the grid between 2015 and 2017. The presentation will touch on many hot topics: “Industry 4.0” technologies, Africa-China relations and western entrepreneurship in China.

Speaker’s bio

Bruno Lhopiteau
Managing Director, Siveco China

A 18-year veteran of the Chinese maintenance market, Bruno Lhopiteau (cn.linkedin.com/in/brunolhopiteau) is the founder of Siveco China (www.sivecochina.com/en), the country’s largest maintenance consultancy and a pioneer in the development of Maintenance 4.0 technologies, with a focus on mobile solutions “for the worker of tomorrow”. He also sits on the board of several companies dealing with plant and building engineering in China and lectures on Industrial Risk Management at the Sino-European School of Technology of Shanghai University.

 

 

cesar
cesar
  • www.solarbuddy.org
  • “The gift of a simple solar buddy light starts to actively address energy poverty and enables communities to achieve a brighter”

Mawukoe Kodah

Cesar Mawukoe Kodah is an entrepreneur and songwriter originally from Togo, West Africa. His entrepreneur career in business began in 2009 where he founded KIW Group with his brother. An international trading company focusing in import and export between Africa and Asia dealing primarily in product development and procurement. With most recent expansion of an office in China under the name: Star Harbor Trading (星航国际贸易(上海)有限公司)—a Shanghai based international trading and consulting company serving clients from around the world.

His project

Today, as part of his mission to give back to the community, partnering with BrightBeam by Doble to improve the quality of education, health, safety and economic status of all people in developing world by supplying innovative, safe, engaging and sustainable solar energy solutions. Together they run a children empowerment program with schools in developed countries—a buddy-to-buddy system where students would buy a light to gift to students living in rural off grid areas around the world. The lights have successfully been distributed to countries such as Papua New Guinea, Tibet, Rwanda, Uganda and currently in talk with several other countries such as India, Togo, Ghana, to name a few. Combining its growing popularity of the mission and Cesar’s musical talent in music—a song titled “Until The Light Comes” will soon illuminate many other rural communities in Globally.