USA Africa Dialogue Series - Foreign Investment Campaign

Foreign Investment Campaign

Every community that needs to grow must reach out to foreign investors
and Lagos State is no exception. Foreign investment helps to drive
economic development across the world and it is common for economies
in need of high growth rates to reach out to foreign investors for
relevant economic input.

In order to be on course for the next level of economic growth in
Lagos, Governor Babatunde Fashola and a team of experts from Lagos
arrived in Paris on 17th December 2009, to seek meaningful investment
support from French businesspersons. Lagos State is on the threshold
of becoming a megacity and undergoing economic transformation dream.
The trip to the capital city of France afforded the Governor and his
team the opportunity of meeting with major investment facilitators in
France.

Governor Fashola presented the ideas and investment possibilities in
Lagos State to the Mouvement Des Enterprises De France (MEDEF), the
leading club of French investors. During the presentation, Governor
Fashola explained areas of investment opportunity in Lagos State and
gave an abridged background of his administration's development drive
and its development vision for Lagos centres on making the city a
model African mega-city that will be synonymous with efficient public
infrastructure, reliable security and high economic growth rate.
The Fashola administration, unlike others is interested in investment
possibilities of businesspersons rather than loans to the state that
will become a liability in the future. There is a lot of work that
still needs to be done to successfully birth the megacity vision in
realistic terms; a fact which he said is essentially an indication
that there is a lot of money to be made from investing in the city's
various areas of need.

Some of the areas of possible investments by foreign investors include
power generation, transportation, tourism and housing which are viable
and mutually enriching investments. The Lekki Free Trade Zone and the
seaports in Lagos are also two advantages Lagos State has to attract
investors, along with the imminent Lekki Airport on the Lekki
Peninsula. Lagos State, with a population of over 17 million people,
and still growing, stands out as a dependable business turf, which the
French business community is invited to tap into, under the auspices
of mutually benefitting arrangements.

For their own part, The French businesspersons were visibly impressed
by the detailed presentation of the governor and his team and
expressed interest in working with his administration in the areas
mentioned, pointing out that they are aware that over 60% of French
businesses in Nigeria are based in Lagos which is strong evidence of
the huge commercial profitability of the City of Lagos.
There are many projects initiated in Lagos State by Governor Fashola
in an endeavor to improve the physical, environmental and economic
well being of the citizens of the State. Transportation, water,
education are all areas that have improved. Methodically, this
administration has worked on improving the economic status of
Lagosians with investments both within the state and internationally.

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