Businessman tasks African leaders to foster entrepreneurship development

A leading Nigerian businessman, Emperor Chris Baywood Ibe, has advised African leaders and governments to empower their entrepreneurs to facilitate intra-trade as a way of achieving rapid socio-economic growth and development on the continent.

He said no one would develop Africa better than Africans, thus re-echoing President Barack Obama’s recent charge on his visit to Kenya that “unlocking the next era of African growth is not with the United States; it’s going be in African trade with each other.”

Delivering a paper titled “Intra-Africa trade: The key to unlocking Africa’s trade potential,” at the recent 2015 UK-Uganda Trade and Investment Convention, in London, Emperor Baywood Ibe, who is the president and CEO of Baywood Group, called for economic, social and fiscal policies in African economies to enable African entrepreneurs compete favourably with their global counterparts.

“African governments need to establish attractive tax regimes, eliminate barriers to inflow and outflow of African-owned investment funds, develop requisite manpower through targeted-capacity-development initiatives and review import policies which stifled local businesses as well as create a pool of funds to be accessed by African entrepreneurs for in-country business start-ups and expansion.”

He recalled that Africa had real resources to sustain the world economy, noting that “at the moment, I stand to be corrected, 60 percent of world’s resources lies in Africa. That is why multinational companies from various parts of the world are streaming into the continent to do business and what that means is that the world cannot do without Africa.

“For us Africans, we must therefore arise and take charge of our own affairs. We have to encourage regional trade; we have to construct pan-Africa highways, remove restrictions that hinder intra African trade, engender peace and harmony for the economies of various African countries to flourish.”

The event which was organised by the Ugandan Convention in partnership with Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) is the largest Ugandan-focused trade and investment forum in Europe, attracting the largest gathering of investors, Ugandans in the Diaspora, government officials, business leaders and UK government officials.

Chairman of the Ugandan Convention UK, Willy Mutenza, expressed gratitude to Emperor Baywood Ibe on the occasion, describing him as “an iconic entrepreneur with an accomplished track record of excellence not only in Nigeria, but throughout Africa.”

This year’s edition of the convention featured various European and African investors, government officials, eminent traditional rulers from Uganda and elsewhere in Africa, Emperor Ibe was the lone West African to present a paper at the event on account of his acclaimed entrepreneurship roles in the Nigerian and African oil and gas industry.