Upper Reach, AFA press partner, publishes special report about Nigeria

AFA Press partner agency Upper Reach had the opportunity to verify the reality of the Nigerian Business. One of the agency’s teams spent several months interviewing the main personalities on the country, making in-depth analysis on the country’s economy and living the day to day of the biggest oil exporter in Africa.
As a result, this AFA Press partner published a report on Nigeria within The Times on Monday, December 10, 2012, consisting on a complete overview on the country situation and prospects. This supplement and all its pieces of news can also be read on-line at Worldfolio.

As a matter of fact, Nigeria comes from one of its cleanest ever elections, two years ago. Furthermore, the current Government Plans (plan 20/2020) expect to place the country as the 20th economy in the world by 2020, taking into account nowadays it is the 30th. Demonstrating full faith in Nigeria’s capabilities and future, Prime Minister David Cameron itself defined the country as ‘a dream waiting to happen’.

Diversification will play a structural role on these expectations. After an ambitious decade on developing oil and gas markets, becoming a reference in the continent both in production and reserves, now it seems to be the time to focus on infrastructures and agriculture. At least, according to interviewees Tunji Owoeye, Elephant Group’s Managing Director, or Alhaji Aliko Dangote, CEO of the Dangote Group.

Taking the diversification model from the country to a company, we can find Flour Mills of Nigeria, a food business company entering the infrastructure development sector, as well as the cement production and other sectors. According to its CEO, the secret of their success is to put the focus on quality.

Botswana- The Unknown Success Story of Africa

Botswana is not a name that appears often in the Western media. The country has been keeping a low profile, but it’s doing its homework. Actually, an acquaintance who visited Gaborone recently described its residential areas as being similar to Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives. The city is clean and orderly, the stores close early, and people are friendly and polite. So how did Botswana transform itself from the Least Developed Country (LDC) it was at the time of its independence in 1966 into an upper middle-income country that is internationally recognized as being the fastest growing and the least corrupt in Africa? How did Botswana sustain economic growth of 9% a year, on average, between 1966 and 2007?