Welcome to the Q4 2024 edition of our newsletter, where we highlight the latest changes and developments in energy and natural resources, technology, media, and telecommunications, emerging markets, banking and finance, transportation and intra-Africa trade sectors.
The reports are of relevant events or occurrences in Nigeria and across Africa in the final quarter of the year 2024.
As the heartbeat of innovation and growth, these sectors play pivotal roles in shaping the economic, social, and technological aspects of our societies. Through industry updates, insightful analysis and expert commentary, our newsletter aims to provide you with a comprehensive overview of the latest trends, developments, and opportunities in these vital sectors.
Energy and Natural Resources
Uganda intends to fully finance its US$4 billion oil refinery project through equity from the UAE-based Alpha MBM Investments. The funding which is expected over a three-yearperiod takes a slightly unconventional approach for financing such projects.....Read more
Technology, Media, and Telecommunications
Orange has partnered with OpenAI and Meta to enhance Artificial Intelligence (AI) language models by incorporating regional African languages that are currently not supported by Generative AI (GenAI) models. The initiative will focus on two West African languages—Wolof, and Pulaar. The companies will train OpenAI’s Whisper speech model and Meta’s Llama 3.1 text model using diverse examples of these languages to improve their understanding.....Read more
Financial Services & Capital Markets
On 2 December 2024, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced the Bloomberg BMatch system as the Electronic Foreign Exchange Matching System (EFEMS) for foreign exchange transactions in the Nigeria Foreign Exchange Market (NFEM). The system, which went live on 1 December 2024, requires all authorised dealers to conduct their interbank Foreign Exchange (FX) transactions through EFEMS. The Bloomberg BMatch platform is designed to enhance the integrity and operational efficiency of the FX market by providing transparent, automated trade matching, thereby improving market efficiency and price discovery..... Read more
Emerging Markets
From Q1 through to Q3 2024, finance costs for major FMCG companies in Nigeria increased by 133.3% year-on-year, reaching NGN1.074 trillion compared to N460.22 billion in 2023. Companies such as Champion Breweries, International Breweries, Nigerian Breweries, BUA Foods, Dangote Sugar, NASCON, Unilever, Cadbury, and Nestle faced increased foreign exchange losses and higher interest rates driven by the efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria to combat inflation and the devaluation of the Naira. For FMCG companies, these challenges are compounded by declining consumer purchasing power, which has limited their ability to pass on rising costs to consumers. The result has been a triple burden of higher finance costs, squeezed profit margins, and weaker earnings, leaving many firms struggling to maintain financial stability.... Read more
Transportation and Intra-Africa Trade
The Federal Government of Nigeria has approved an AfCFTA readiness fund to the tune of NGN250 billion to prepare medium to small enterprises (MSMEs) to engage in trade under the AfCFTA competitively. AfCFTA is currently in its Operational phase of implementation.
This stage requires the adoption of five instruments, namely: Rules of Origin, Tariff Concessions, online mechanism on monitoring and reporting of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), the Pan-African payment settlement system and the African Trade observatory..... Read more
Regulatory Compliance and Public Sector
The Nigerian government seeks to pass Tax Reform Bills (the Bills), which seek to increase the percentage of Value Added Tax (VAT) revenue distributable to states from 50% to 55% while reducing the Federal Government’s share to 10%. Under this new framework, the revenue distributable to States will remain at
35%, whilst there is a proposed zero VAT on exports and essential goods...... Read more