‘Footprint to Africa is on the right path, making solid impact in the right places’
Footprint to Africa Limited is a leading business and financial news resource and investment bridge company designed specifically to educate intra-African and foreign investors about the immense but untapped opportunities in Africa. OSITA OPARAUGO, its managing director/CEO, recently spoke to CHUKS OLUIGBO, assistant editor, on the company’s journey so far, its MoU with SMEDAN, collaboration with Cross River State government, among other issues. Excerpts:
Footprint to Africa in 2016 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) geared towards boosting the country’s SME sector. How is that MoU working?
We have an understanding, a five-year MoU, with SMEDAN to help grow the Nigerian Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) base. We consider that a very serious move for the Nigerian economy and for Footprint to Africa because we recognise that SMEs are the backbone of every economy. We have encountered some difficulties getting that understanding to work because of unavailability of data. So Footprint to Africa and SMEDAN are working right now, brainstorming, consulting on how to get the data of MSMEs operating in Nigeria. You cannot say you want to improve the agricultural sector of Nigeria, for instance, when you don’t have the data, say, of the quantity of sesame seeds or cashew nuts produced in Niger State or in Enugu State. Government cannot promote SMEs or support them if it doesn’t know who they are, where they are operating, their capacity, their difficulties and their challenges. So, right now we are concerned with getting the data of MSMEs operating in Nigeria, we are working that out with SMEDAN. As that is going on, of course, because Footprint to Africa is not Footprint to Nigeria, we are involved in other economies in Africa. We are heavily involved in Sierra Leone, in Ghana, in Kenya. Most recently we have got a UK textile company to invest over £50 million in Kenya and that is about to take off.
You also have an understanding with Cross River State government. Could you enlighten us about this understanding?
The Cross River State alliance with Footprint to Africa was something that started out of a conversation I had with the governor, Prof Ben Ayade. I realised that he has so much interest in developing Cross River State, and he is open to Public Private Partnership (PPP) and is willing to go the extra mile to support investors to come into Cross River State. The bureaucratic bottlenecks which are synonymous with Nigerian governments and government agencies are not there. Ever since Footprint to Africa and Cross River State came to that understanding, there have been a lot of FDI inflows into Cross River State. Footprint to Africa and Cross River State, for instance, got in a first-class educational institution from the United Kingdom, the Schools Company, to overhaul the education system of Cross River State. We are setting up a Royal Construction Academy in Cross River State that will concentrate in vocational skills training like masonry, tiling, POP, etc. We are 170 million people, we export crude oil and raw agricultural products, but we should be exporting skills out of Nigeria to other African countries. If you go to construction sites in this country today, you would see that the tiler is from Togo, the mason is from Ghana, etc. They say the best hands in POP are from Ghana, Togo and Cameroon, when we have over 70 million youths in Nigeria. We have people here, we should be exporting skills and not at this time importing labour to come and do things as little as carpentry, masonry, joinery, etc. The Royal Construction Academy that we are setting up in Cross River State is going to focus on giving this training. The site has been handed over already. Cross River State is building a brand new city called Calas Vegas; it’s going to be a twin city on an island and we are deeply involved in it. We are really impressed with the government of Cross River State and the partnership between Footprint to Africa and the state government will see a lot of investments come into the state.
You and the governor were recently in a meeting with UK investors in London. Are these FDIs the outcome of that meeting?
Yes, they are. Driving FDI into Cross River State was part of the meeting in London and part of the alliance between Footprint to Africa and the Cross River State government. Beyond that meeting, we also have an understanding with some United States and South African investors as well and apart from the 21.3MW of electricity that is about to be generated in Cross River State, we are also currently discussing with a company in the US to come and put 10MW solar power station in the state.
Apart from Cross River State, are you also discussing with other states of the federation?
Footprint to Africa is actively engaged in discussion with two other states currently but it is premature to disclose the details. We are also in talks with some investors who are interested in the Federal Government. Footprint to Africa and the Nigerian Investment Promotion Council are producing a documentary on the non-oil sectors of the Nigeria economy and that is also yielding a lot of interest in the non-oil sectors, but for now we would rather keep it between Footprint to Africa and those organisations and the federal and respective state governments until things begin to happen as they are happening in Cross River State now.
One of the innovations you came up with last year was the MarketSquare Africa, which is designed to help SMEs interconnect. Nearly a year after, what’s the level of activity on that platform?
As the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Okechukwu Enelamah, said during the launch of the MarketSquare Africa last year, the platform “is an idea whose time has come”. He was right because amazing activities are taking place on the platform. The Manufacturers Association of Israel has signed on to the MarketSquare Africa as a platform where manufacturers in Israel get agents and distributors within Africa. Companies from India, China and so on are signing on as well. Ghana, Kenya and South Africa have also picked interest in the MarketSquare Africa.
You also launched ‘Africa in 10 Minutes’. How’s that going?
We realised early on that 70 percent of our visitors on the Footprint to Africa platform came from mobile devices. What we did was to incorporate the ‘Africa in 10 Minutes’ so that those who do not have time to read can hit the button and watch weekly highlights of major happenings in the African business and investment world in under 10 minutes. But in 2017 we have incorporated a destination interview. We have interviewed CGCs on that platform. Airtel, for instance, is in on that platform now, Seplat is on that platform. We go to these industries, we interview their MDs and we take live coverage of what’s going on there, we try to use it to show people that yes, a lot is happening in Africa. In the first week of April, we will be working in Ghana. As it is, we have had about 11 interviews and live destination coverage for 11 companies operating in Ghana.
Are you satisfied with what Footprint to Africa has done so far?
We thank God for what we have achieved. God has been faithful. Three years ago when we started Footprint to Africa, because we were operating out of Nigeria, a lot of people did not give us a chance. We had a lot of discouragement. Some people said we should take the platform to South Africa, or to Ghana, or to Kenya, that Nigeria was not the right place to start, but we didn’t agree with that; we are talking about 170 million Nigerians and we know there are fantastic people here. So we started from here. We may have had our challenges, we may not be 100 percent satisfied with what is going on today, but we think we are on the right path, especially with the online TV programme that we have started to also help showcase investment opportunities in Africa.
What is the next big step for Footprint to Africa?
We consider everything we are doing now very big. We are not in a hurry to incorporate the second stage of the Footprint to Africa business plan, we want to consolidate on what we have now, we want to consolidate on Footprint to Africa, we want to consolidate on our alliances with the states, we want to consolidate on the Marketsquare Africa, we want to consolidate on Africa in 10 Minutes. We will concentrate on these platforms, run them for the next one or two years, then we will go to the next stage of the business plan.
Do you have any word for intending investors into Africa?
My slogan is: If you are not in Africa, you are not in business yet. Look at the way the world is going now, there is nowhere in the world apart from Africa where the return on investment is more than 5 percent. In America it is 2-3 percent, 4 percent max; but in Africa you get 100 percent return on investment, if not 1,000 percent. Africa is ready for investment, the countries in Africa now understand the need for cooperation and collaboration. So my advice to every investor out there is: come to Africa. If you can’t find the opportunity in Nigeria, you can find it in Ghana, or Sierra Leone, or Mozambique, or Tanzania, or South Africa, or Cote d’Ivoire. Africa is ready, Africa is willing. If you are not in Africa, you are not in business.