President of Africa’s largest conglomerate and Africa’s richest businessman, Aliko Dangote has joined Jeffery Immelt, CEO of General Electric (GE), American multinational giant, to call for further integration in Africa, saying it is a crucial factor for economic growth across Africa.
The both CEOs made the plea at the just concluded US-Africa Business forum sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the US Department of Commerce.
Immelt has pledged investment of $2 billion in Africa by 2018, saying ‘‘business and investors would benefit from a well integrated Africa, given that what is offered by a group of countries would be better thought through than that of a single country and thus be more attracting to investors.’’
Dangote, who also spoke on the panel of Expanding Business Opportunities, agreed with Immelt by highlighting the bottleneck of doing business across Africa without strong integration.
‘‘I need about 37 visas to move around in Africa, suggesting there must be integration within Africa,’’ he said.
Africa is a big market, Dangote said, “and obviously, I don’t expect GE to go there and open up factories all over the place. But if they go to West Africa and they open in Nigeria, then there should be free movement of goods and services, either within, not even within the region, but within the continent itself.”
Immelt conceded that for so long the US businesses left Africa, business wise, to the Europeans and Chinese primarily because the American market “was so good.” “If you’re an American of my age, really for a long period of time you didn’t have to travel much. And so, we kind of gave Africa to the Europeans first, and to the Chinese later. But today, it’s wide open for American’s but getting local is the first step.”
However, Immelt, who is at the forefront of the call for the extension of the charter of the US Exim bank, called for risk-based financing, describing it as one of the main gaps in “getting local” in Africa.
“We need more risk capital… What we need is a good coordination of US government, OPEC, Ex-Im, World Banks, people like that along with real investors were willing to put skin in the game to get that first investment in,” said Immelt, who also called for better standards by African governments with regards to investment attracting strategies.
