CDC Plans $1bn Post-Brexit Investment Drive in Nigeria

• CDC Plans $1bn Post-Brexit Investment Drive in Nigeria

The United Kingdom’s development finance arm, CDC Group Plc, may invest more than $1bn 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.

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

“A reasonable figure for Nigeria, given the size of its economy, would be about $1.2bn,” the Chief Executive Officer, CDC, Nicholas O’Donohoe, was quoted as saying in an interview in Lagos.

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

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

This year, it loaned $100m to the Nigerian unit of Indorama Corporation, which is building a fertiliser factory in the south of the country. It also committed $25m to Synergy, a local private-equity firm focused on small businesses in West Africa.

The UK 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.