UK firm targets $1 Billion investment in Nigeria

The U.K.’s development finance arm, CDC Group Plc, may invest more than $1 billion in Nigeria over the next four years as the government looks to increase business ties with Africa after it leaves the European Union in March.

CDC, which has investments ranging from listed Nigerian banks to an Ethiopian wine-maker and a safari lodge in Zimbabwe, aims to put as much as $4.5 billion into the continent in that time, which would almost triple its existing African portfolio of roughly $2.6 billion.

“A reasonable figure for Nigeria, given the size of its economy, would be about $1.2 billion,” Nicholas O’Donohoe, CDC’s chief executive officer, said in an interview in Lagos, the nation’s commercial capital.

CDC will also open offices in Lagos and Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, adding to one it has in Johannesburg. The Nigerian office will open early next year and have around 10 people, O’Donohoe said.

The group has been active in Nigeria, where it has $400 million of investments, for 70 years. It has injected money into companies directly as equity or debt, or through private-equity funds.

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May visited South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya earlier this year, saying she wanted the country to become the G7’s biggest investor on the continent by 2022. (Bloomberg)