News Express

The power crisis in Nigeria is like a malignant disease, infecting the nation’s economy and causing its citizens untold suffering. Small businesses are especially vulnerable, as they struggle to shoulder the burden of providing their power, while individuals face daily frustrations and hardships. Every day, across Nigeria, the power situation has become like a slow poison, creeping into every corn...

A Dataset Showing Nigeria’s Top 10 insurers by gross written premium (GWP) is giving analysts the encouragement to suggest emerging dynamism in the country’s insurance landscape that could position it for enhanced growth and greater development. The data do not, however, show that insurance penetration in Africa’s most populous country and its largest economy by gross domestic product (GDP) size,...

In a Nigerian Economic landscape where 2024 poses major challenges for businesses, a survey conducted by multinational insurance and risk management giant, Allianz, and published in its 13th Allianz Risk Barometer, Nigerian business leaders participating in the global survey have identified changes in legislation, cyber and microeconomic developments as the joint top risks that companies will face...

A disastrous eight years of Buharinomics, the clueless management of the Nigerian economy under former president Muhammadu Buhari, and a shaky Tinubunomics of the months-old current Presidency of Bola Tinubu are unravelling the extraordinary danger the Nigerian economy faces under the All Progressives Congress (APC) which appears to do more politics than economy management, multiple concerned anal...

A Raft of Initiatives is emerging and getting launched at the ongoing U.N. climate summit, COP28, in Dubai aimed at boosting clean energy and reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, details rolling out of the event show. One of the most widely supported initiatives is expected to lead to a cut in the share of fossil fuels in global energy production, and reduce the greenhouse gas emission...

Africa’s economic landscape as the next frontier for global investments was on song for three days last week in Marrakech, Morocco, where the African Development Bank (AfDB) led by President Akinwumi Adesina of Nigeria, and its development partners successfully showcased the continent’s value chains to international investors, attracting more than 1000 delegates to what is now globally recognised...

Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan with a 2060 target could be really challenged by the need for a clear development policy approach. Early distinct gaps noticeable in the NETP programme include a lack of holistic legal framework; no incentives for transition to clean energy; absence of disincentives for the use of dirty energy; and centralisation of energy provision in Nigeria, according to a repor...

Foreign investors appear to be carefully avoiding Nigeria’s oil and gas-rich states, also called the Niger Delta region, as data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on assessment of foreign direct inflows into the nation’s sub-nationals in Q2 of 2022 show that the region’s states were among 32 subnationals which attracted zero dollar foreign inflow since Q2 of 2015. Additionally, the regi...

Despite the challenges facing the Nigerian insurance market, microinsurance offers unique and exciting opportunities for both insurers and consumers, as well as the general economy, with its potential to reach millions of people excluded from traditional insurance products and other financial windows of the economy, multiple industry analysts have told Business a.m. The Nigerian market is rapidly...

Global Banking Posted its best performance in the last 18 months since 2007 on the back of sharp increases in interest rates in many advanced economies, including a 500-basis-point rise in the United States, a world review of the banking sector by global management consulting firm McKinsey, has shown. McKinsey’s just published “Global Banking Annual Review 2023: The Great Banking Transition”, foun...

A new report by the European Investment Bank (EIB) based on a 2023 survey of Banking in Africa has found that banks on the continent have continued to show resilience despite operating in what the EIB described as “ a difficult environment.” The report titled “Uncertain Times, Resilient Banks: African Finance at a Crossroads” released under the EIB’s eighth annual Investment in Africa report and c...

The Group Of The World’s 20 Leading Economies has admitted the African Union (AU) as a permanent member, a development termed by many as a “later than never” acknowledgement of Africa’s relevance on the global stage. Until now, South Africa was the bloc’s only G20 member and the AU had advocated for full membership for seven years in its quest to gain meaningful roles among the global bodies and a...

The Combination Of Aggressive interest-rate hikes in developed countries, lack of sufficient affordable capital from the World Bank and a failure to consider and address the spillover effects are creating costly spillback economic consequences on low-middle income countries already at high risk of debt distress, a new analysis from One Campaign says. The international, non-profit advocacy and camp...

After Over Two Years Of anticipation from the Nigerian populace, the National Bureau of Statistics eventually published Nigeria’s labour statistics, considered an official analysis of the employment level of Africa’s most populous country. Prior to the report, economic and finance experts had difficulty assessing the real-time data on the nature of the labour market and how to measure the impact o...

The new head of the Nigerian treasury, officially designated ‘Minister of Finance’, Wale Edun, will have fully taken charge. But in the quest to see that all the levers of economic policy management are well aligned, the attention of analysts and others following the unfolding direction of the Nigerian economy, will shift to the person to be appointed substantive governor of the Central Bank of Ni...

An expert in the Africa department of the International Monetary Fund has expressed optimism for the future success of Nigeria's e-Naira, Africa's first central bank digital currency and the world's second. Despite its underwhelming performance since its launch in October 2021, Jack Ree, a senior economist in the Africa department of the IMF, who conducted a study on the eNaira last year, suggeste...

African currencies have lost ground against the US dollar year-to-date, thereby driving inflation in the import-reliant continent. Policymakers across the continent are left with limited options to arrest the decline as a result of depleting dollar reserves, according to a report adapted from DW. As US interest rate hikes make the dollar more attractive to investors, sub-Saharan African currencies...

A Crescendo Of Expectations is building up over Aba, one of Nigeria’s major manufacturing hubs, which for decades has had its stars dimmed by the ill luck of bad and incompetent governance and total neglect of the social and economic infrastructure required to make a manufacturing hub thrive. The expectations are being built around the provenance of having the banker, Alex Otti, on the saddle as g...

Former President Muhammadu Buhari who doubled as substantive minister of petroleum resources, assisted by a junior minister, Timipre Sylva and Mele Kyari, group chief executive officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited who was positioned to be running ground operations, may have been taken Nigerians for a big ride on the repairs and rehabilitation of government-owned refineries as wor...

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the two Bretton Woods institutions that have spent at least 20 years breathing down Nigeria’s neck to let its currency, the Naira free, are today still in celebratory mood joined by domestic analysts and the markets who continue to express joy over the decision by the new government of President Bola Tinubu to reform the country’s foreign e...

After at least eight years of the Nigerian economy drifting and feeling shortchanged by inept management, markets and economic analysts, both local and foreign, who trained their eyes and ears in expectation as Nigeria inaugurated Bola Ahmed Tinubu as its 16th president, have turned in a largely positive reception to the soundbites contained in the president’s inaugural address. Analysts at FBNQue...

Ahead of his inauguration as president, Business A.m. has learnt that President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his team have been inundated with tonnes of position papers and memoranda from a myriad of independent sources offering strong positions on what and how the incoming president should tackle a number of issues that have kept Nigeria’s economy down for at least eight years. Business a.m. under...

In the biggest positive outlook on investment inflow into Nigeria by international analysts in nearly a decade, the second half of 2023 and all of 2024 has been projected as periods in the country would attract record international capital inflow following the ease of uncertainty caused by recent general elections in the country. Overall, we expect the second half of 2023 to already match Nigeria’...

The rising spate of building collapse in Nigeria, especially in Lagos, the economic nerve centre of the country, is putting worrying shivers down the spine of investors, the government and the general public primarily in regard to the enormous financial, economic and social implications. According to documents from the Building Collapse Prevention Guild, at least 271 buildings have collapsed in Ni...

Except there is a last-minute miracle, the President Muhammadu Buhari government, already well known for being out of its depth on the economy, is very likely to hand over to the next government a highly risky economy, what economic analysts would rate as ‘junk’, and with a debt burden of at least N46 trillion. Revenue and debt management have become persistent challenges that have remained one of...