What Africa needs now: Transnational infrastructure, Transparency in systems, Using and developing all her people, ...

Akinwumi Adesina is running for President of AfDB. He was a Most-Valuable Player on the Nigerian Federal Cabinet, so I say yes, hope he gets the job. 

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Speech by Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and candidate for President of the African Development Bank 

Delivered at the Business Council for Africa’s Annual Debate

21 April 2015

Source

Africa is experiencing a never-before-seen economic and political transformation. Five of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies are located here. It has rightfully created tremendous excitement not only within our borders, but around the world.

 While there are many reasons to celebrate the improved economic performance, daunting challenges remain and troubling trends have emerged.

We are facing widening economic and social inequalities that have resulted from non-inclusive growth. Africa’s poverty rates are still the highest in the world. Despite gains that have been made, the reality is that 44% of Africans still live on less than $1.25 per day.

These are struggles I know. I grew up in poverty, the son of a farmer who worked for less than 10 cents per day. I was one of the lucky few to attain education and opportunity. I don’t want my story to be the exception, I want the cycle of poverty to be broken across Africa. Our economic success needs to be shared – with prosperity for all – creating a more equal, stable, and peaceful continent. Nothing is more important than putting an end to poverty.

We are also facing rapid urbanization that will determine the resilience of the growth process.

We have exceedingly high levels of unemployment – which leads to social, political, and economic fragility.

Fragility is on the rise. 53% of Africa’s nations are fragile states. Fragility, joblessness, and economic and political exclusion breed terrorism. We need to tackle the fundamentals of fragility.

We are on the receiving end of climate change. Although Africa has done little to contribute to the damage, we are suffering heavily from the effects of it. We are paying a disproportionate price for climate change.

While we should celebrate our achievements, we also need to recognize that these key challenges must be tackled head-on by the African Development Bank. We need to renew our commitment to addressing these together – with both regional and non-regional members. As we do so, the Bank will grow into its role as the premier finance institution on the continent.

That is why I am running for president of the African Development Bank.

To make progress, the next President must not only understand the merits of a policy or strategy, but how to translate it into action on the ground. This is something I have done over the course of my career.

I’ve implemented innovative finance schemes in several African countries – from Uganda to Tanzania, Kenya to Mozambique, Ghana to Nigeria. I’ve helped to leverage over $4 billion from commercial banks to finance agricultural SMEs. And I launched an electronic wallet program which helped to end corruption in the fertilizer sector in Nigeria, and has reached 14.5 million farmers and impacted 50 million people. These are programs that have real impact on the ground.

Having lived and worked in 15 African countries, including 10 years in francophone countries, I have experienced firsthand the complexities of what our continent needs.

Too often our decisions are driven more by our own political interests or policy preferences, when it should be driven by the needs of those we are seeking to empower. This is particularly important when speaking about a continent so ecologically, socially, and economically diverse as Africa. There is no one solution or quick fix.

First and foremost, the question is: what kind of Africa do we want?

 I want an Africa with inclusive and sustainable growth, and one that is globally competitive. As President, I will focus on five strategic priorities: integrated infrastructure, private sector growth, increased employment opportunities, reviving the rural economy and regional integration.

The focus, across the board, will also be on scaling programs that have delivered results —tangible outcomes, not merely outputs.

Across all the priority areas, we need to strengthen integrity, transparency and accountability. We will demand of ourselves the same thing as we demand of our countries. We must manage our resources well, and we must always examine our actions from the perspective of the public. We must put people first, because ultimately we are investing in a better future for them.

Let me speak briefly to the priority areas.

We need to minimize the global widening of the infrastructure gap. There’s no lack of ideas about what Africa needs to do on infrastructure – the key is how you turn them into bankable projects. We need smart projects.

 In infrastructure, the players are many but they are not coordinated. The Bank can play that role effectively: funneling money to the right priority areas. The Bank should engage all domestic, regional and international partners – including established partners, like the World Bank, and newly emerging players, like BRICS’ new development bank. I will also lead the bank to focus on rapidly building infrastructure for small and fragile states.

We need to mobilize greater resources to finance infrastructure in Africa. To manage that effectively will require $93 billion per year and will require mobilizing domestic resources, private sector funds, and multilateral financing. Leveraging capital markets is crucial to improving our approach to infrastructure.

We need to prioritize the kind of infrastructure projects that will help us deliver “power-for-all” – universal access to electricity. Access to power is absolutely vital to Africa’s development. Africa has 50% of the world’s renewable energy, but it remains largely untapped. Developing energy infrastructure will drive rapid economic and social development. We should target investment toward renewable energy – solar, hydropower, geothermal, wind. And we should have a two track approach - supporting a combination of large, transformative regional power projects and smaller projects that can be implemented more quickly to create immediate impact in local communities.

Africa’s private sector accounts for 70 percent of investment, 70 percent of output and 90 percent of employment. The private sector can drive industrialization in Africa and unlock wealth at all levels of society. The Bank needs to develop its private sector operations.

Back in 2005, the Bank was lending $250 million. By 2013, it was lending $2.1 billion. Clearly, a lot is being done in private sector, but it is still not meeting the needs. For inclusive growth, we have to direct financing to empower entrepreneurship for those that impact the majority of the population – SMEs in the private sector. As President, I will work to build the financial intermediaries needed to deliver affordable financing to African companies. We will establish business development advisory services targeted at positioning SMEs to secure venture capital and private equity funds.

The equity capital market accounts for $1.5 trillion per year, but these funds are heavily concentrated in just three countries: South Africa, Nigeria, and Namibia.  We need to deepen the market to mobilize financing – we need to get these funds to smaller and fragile countries. It can’t all go to the same three places, that’s not real progress.

We also need to mobilize domestic resources. Non-regional donors must have a leveraging effect. There are a lot of domestic resources in Africa: such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and diaspora funds – and we have to unlock them. We have $158 billion in sovereign wealth funds alone. We need to put it to good use.

And we need to prioritize blended finance - combining public and private financing - to reduce risk exposure to the private sector.

We need to work with governments to lower the cost of doing business across Africa. Currently 18 out of the 25 least competitive countries are in Africa. This needs to change. Enabling the private sector will increase the opportunities in the job market. Changes need to be made to address the fact that the economic growth we have today is jobless growth. And we need to pay special attention to unemployment among two populations: youth and women.

30 million youths enter the market annually, and we need to create jobs for them. This is not just an economic priority. It is a security investment. Without jobs, we face economic, social, and political risks. As many of you know, the majority of youth who turn to violence have no job—and seemingly no options. 50% of young fighters in Sierra Leone and Liberia participated in the violence because they didn’t have jobs.

And we’re facing a migration crisis – largely due to an absence of jobs for our young people. I want to build an Africa that keeps and attracts talented, hardworking people. Our people should not be boarding ships, putting themselves at incredible risk, in search of hope and a chance to make something of their lives. That’s why I believe we must build a more prosperous continent that will give hope and opportunities to tens of millions of our youth. We want an Africa where they want to stay, not an Africa they want to move away from.

You can’t develop without women. Investing in women is not just the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do. Women are the primary source for growth in local economies. Yet today, 64 million more women than men are unemployed in Africa. And if we don’t address women’s unemployment, we’re not going to make a dent in the broader unemployment crisis. Women need access to education, technology, jobs, and financing.

As president, I will lead the African Development Bank to implement an Annual Gender Score Card and an African Women Empowerment Index, because we shouldn’t just talk about women empowerment – we should actually do it and measure that we’re doing it well.

And with 50% of Africa’s farmers being women, we must commit to reviving the rural economies for their benefit as much as anyone else’s.

We need to change the way we see agriculture – it’s not merely about development, it’s an economic driver. If you use agriculture as an engine to revive rural economies you create new prosperity zones for the people and that will have an impact on reducing insecurity problems.

Africa has 65% of all the arable land left to feed the 9 billion people in the world by 2050. Transforming the agriculture sector will have the largest impact on inclusive growth on the continent, given that 70-80% of the labor force is engaged in the sector but are locked into poverty.

We must provide innovative financing instruments and direct private equity funds toward agribusiness investment. By reviving rural economies and empowering them with tools to connect their goods to viable markets, we will unlock incredible opportunities for growth, ensure equitable growth and realize the promise of a shared prosperity—as we lift millions out of poverty.

We need to diversify the economies in African countries that are rich in natural resources, to shield them from over-exposure to volatilities in global markets (as we saw recently with falling oil prices). Focusing on unlocking agriculture’s potential will go a long way toward diversification and building "soil wealth" rather than relying on oil and mineral wealth.

Much of Africa’s growth is due to commodities and high extractive rates. Focusing on exporting our abundance of raw commodities makes African economies vulnerable to volatilities in commodities prices. Unless this is changed, Africa is like a giant with feet of clay. We need to lead these countries toward diversification. And agriculture is key.

We also need to improve management of those natural resources – transparency and accountability must be enforced. Africa is not poor, but its people are poor because money disappears. That needs to change. Africa is rich in natural resources, with $85 trillion in discovered resources, but it loses $60 billion per year in illicit outflows. We need to work on all levels to enforce transparency and accountability. This money should be going to development – to advancing healthcare and education in our communities. Imagine what that $60 billion could do for our people each year. Africa’s resources should not belong to the few, but should be for the benefit of all.

We need to reduce inequalities in economic prosperity among countries in the region. We should integrate our region. Economies that focus on regional markets are less vulnerable to price fluctuations.
 The world’s most prosperous trading blocs are heavy on interregional trade.

Landlocked countries need to be connected to coastal ports through investment in transnational infrastructure, especially highways, trans-boundary water basins, and railway, maritime, and air transport systems. We must deliver integrated infrastructure and eliminate barriers – this will expand the size of the regional markets and reduce the cost of movement of goods, services and people, creating a more open Africa.

I know the roadmap toward that vision for Africa is challenging, but we are already seeing tremendous progress, and we now have the confidence to achieve even greater results.

We need to build a Bank with a pulse for Africa’s people. A Bank that is more impact-oriented, efficient and responsive to the needs of its clients in a rapidly changing, multilateral economic landscape. A Bank that will be the partner of choice for all things African development.

We must build an Africa that will unlock greater opportunities with hope and prosperity for all. An Africa that all Africans can be happy to call their home. Together, we can achieve this.

THE END.
Source : adesinaforafdb.com 
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Vultures and Volatility

Here's to a year of winning in romance and finance.
Step One: Order Big Girl and Big Boy.

Step Two: Enjoy a few minutes of grown-up fiction, and come back for more UpNaira every day.  

Vultures and Volatility

by Tosin Otitoju

“Oh God, is this thing even moving at all?” she mutters as rain water crawls down the glass of the car’s windows.  There has been a mere drizzle but the clouds - engorged as they are with dark bile - threaten a great show-down replete with thunder, lightening, and flood. 

“Mr. Yellow, enter that next lane.”  She has no time for this slow-crawling traffic at ten o’clock in the morning, particularly because the markets have gone mad again. 

Her phone rings: “Yes, yes, I know,” she is saying.  With one ear still pressed to the flat phone she grabs her bags.  “Un-fucking-believable,” she sighs while pushing the vehicle door open. 

Thus it is that our financial maven has to walk the last few meters to the office today.  She is tottering slightly as her tastefully-heeled pumps negotiate the rough stone and sand street that is already littered with puddles.  The two minutes to her building, she is a mess of missed phone-calls and a mental struggle to rediscover her analytical methodology.  She needs to prioritize and execute.  First, prioritize. 

The startled security guards at the gate of the office building fall over themselves to help with her oversized bag and her laptop bag.  They have never really seen her outside her chauffeured vehicles before.  She is chuffing under the weight of the bags and the humid tropical heat.  Her armpits itch from the sweat.  She ignores the guards and quickly makes it to the elevators and up to her office suite. 

By the time she gets in she almost knows what to do but she needs a piece of information:  “Tai, Euro-dollar,” she asks her FX-trader. 

“It has just been red all morning, ma,” he says. 

She stands at Tai’s desk.  Her bags have been taken by the assistant, unobtrusively into her office.  She sees from the currency charts that their losses could only grow.  She calls her dealer in London.  She redials.  If he doesn’t respond, she has a back-up plan.  He picks up on the third ring: “Honey, you owe me big time,” he says.  “I have a buyer for 100.”

London is ready to take 100 lots off her.  “Sell ASAP.  Confirm,” she says without even waiting to hear the price. 

The lots are sold within a minute, with losses enough to erase three cycles of profit.  It could have been worse.  An hour later and it would have been 2.5 times worse. 

She has not saved her company yet.  They have accounts in local stocks.  Those are down, but she thinks it’s just jitters; local is not expected to mirror the global market.  Inexperienced local traders would not know that, so she sees an opportunity to make a little “lunch” money off the rebound.  “Ram, we should maintain UpVol.” she calls to Ramesh.  “I think we’re looking at a panic play.”

She is exhausted.  She is in the red, no matter what she does today.  Euro-Dollar is their most leveraged account, and there just isn’t the kind of speed in local to undo their losses.  She is trying to get fresh funds to play with.  “Where does one recoup over a million dollars of losses?” she wonders.  “Who is wet right now?”  She dials the former governor, a client.  “There’s an opening right now, sir.  I suggest you take a look.”    

She succeeds, because Sam the former governor says, “you’ve been doing a good job, young lady.  You have my permission.” 

Now smiles broadly, full of sugary charm: “I knew you would move quickly on a good thing, sir.  How much?”

“Just put the whole thing,” says the governor.  “Half.  Eh, I don’t know - you use your judgment, just bring me the returns.” 

“Well on this you could be looking at sixty days with five or six percent…if you have some cash somewhere not doing anything for you.” 

“You said sixty days?  I see…”

“My guys could assist with the transfer, it’s top-rate,” she says, and starts typing a message to Esohe, her marketing guy.  

The governor says, “I have a daughter like you – very sharp.”

“Thanks sir.  I’m just doing my job.” She sends the instant message to Esohe: “Chief Sam U. has fish.  Confirm.”  She estimates half a million at most in Trust Bank as he hasn’t made any real money since the elections.  She trusts Esohe to secure most of that total within hours. 

Next customer!  She tries the number of another famous “Big Man,” but finds his phones switched off.  He must be travelling.  Her sandwich arrives for lunch.  It’s turkey slices with butter and egg whites, lettuce and beets, between two extra-thick slices of pumpkin bread.  She asks her assistant to keep trying the Big Man’s phone.  Food is joy, she thinks as she swirls her tongue around the creamy mix. 

She is reading messages too: Chief Sam has three hundred cash at home, so Esohe is taking it through the bank.  She replies, reminding him that there is three-sixty or so at the bank as well: the chief deposited over 350,000 for a six-month interest of 2%, and that was six months ago.  Things are going better than she expected.  She receives another message from Barack: “Babe, babe…”  It irritates her how much he uses the word.  She deletes his message. 

“The chief has picked up?” she yells over to her assistant.  The chief did say he was going to be abroad, she suddenly remembers.  He would be several time zones away, in the dead of night. 

“I’m still trying, ma.”

“He must still be asleep.  I want to be the first person he talks to when he wakes up.” she snaps back.  Now she checks the news wires – it has been a bloody day in the markets.  What she needs most is safety - some treasury bills or something - but there are no signals she can trust.  She could load up on local securities, but that takes so long that the play would have gone stale.  Still, action must be taken quickly. 

Her analytical methodology takes all these pieces of information and outputs an answer that is actionable and exact.  She instructs Esohe to call his list – “very high priority,” she says.  She goes fishing herself, talking to a dozen people from the list.  Someone wants to set up a meeting…but she needs money now, not later.  She needs a million plus, and the big problem is that after tomorrow’s headlines, nobody will want to invest.

Around three p.m., they finally get the other chief on the line.  “Don’t rush things,” he says.  He seems to suspect something.  Maybe he has seen the news.  “When I get back we can sit down together.  You always look so sweet.”  In other words, no cash. 

By around four p.m. the money is in from Chief Sam U.  Four hundred thousand only.  She is relieved that Esohe made it before the banks closed.  Esohe also has two good leads from the list, estimated at about eighty thousand.  Even if he reels those in tonight, she still needs half a million. 

There are phone calls now from worried clients.  She assures them, “we anticipated the shake-out and are now operating our proprietary plan.”  She ignores a phone call from Barack, who then writes “So bad, Babe.”  He is eager to see her again, that’s what he means by “so bad.”  His ardent sex drive irritates her. 

She talks to her US brokers – they are just as shaken.  She signs various approvals for the next day’s transactions.  Just before she can finish up, her assistant alerts that Money FM is on the line, so she gives a quick radio interview while the staff is gathering around Tai’s desk for the six o’clock staff meeting. 

Ram is worried about a freeze-up in local.  His boss has now finished the radio piece and joined the huddle.  Liquidity is always an issue in such markets, Ram says, and he doesn’t want to be locked in when there is an adverse movement – that is one horror movie that he never wants to watch again.  But she argues that the local trade presents “un-missable” short-term gains. 

She searches the men’s faces for signs of support.  Ram shrugs.  He may disagree with her aggressive plan but she knows he’ll do what she says and do it with extremely good judgment.  She is not worried about Ram. 

“What kind of night can we look forward to on UpVol, Tai?” she asks.  Tai, who has never seen a trading day like this one before, is too shaken to offer any opinions.  He stammers that he’ll run the numbers and she is annoyed that he wouldn’t just estimate but as usual leans too much on exact figures. 

The office manager, the only one at the meeting with gray in his hair, does not voice his own worries, but his stiff, shocked demeanor says all: if this company can’t make fifty thousand within this week, it may have problems paying staff salaries.   The boss strives to reassure her team: “money makes more money, it does not just disappear.” 

This meeting continues until she receives a reminder - “you coming?” – for dinner at 7pm with her former classmate.  This guy is her old acquaintance, former friend, fellow alum, something like that.  She is never really sure where to place him.  She asks him for 30 minutes, she’s going to be late.   She decides presently that it’s best to adjourn the meeting and quit the pep-talk, and so they close for the day, tired and hoping for a bit of good luck to save them.

She picks up her bags, out the door, elevators, security says goodnight, Mr. Yellow waiting down the stairs, and hurls her body tired but still fragrant in its yellow blouse – it’s silk, very becoming - and patterned skirt into the backseat of her jeep.   Mr. Yellow is looking in the rearview mirror with his head cocked, waiting for instructions.

 “We’re going to Sonar,” she tells him. 

“Yes, madam.”

She quickly dabs and sprays and touches-up.   Her mirror approves. 

At the restaurant-club Sonar, her friend Ego (pronounced AY-go) watches her enter the main hall.   When she reaches the table, he gives her a kiss on the cheek.  “You look tired,” he says. 

“It’s been quite a day.  You know.”  She orders chapman and shrimp fried rice.  

“You need something stiffer, Child.  Take some of this.”  She obediently downs his nearly-full glass of Guinness, despite its bitter taste.  Behind Ego is a Nigerian oil painting - of a royal on horseback amid the crowd at a Durbar festival.   She notices that the painting is bright while the furniture is dark.  She forgets to be sad, so preoccupied is she with the robe’s blue-white and the scene’s yellow bright. 

The waiter brings her rice.  It feels soothing to have her mouth full of this salty, oily stuff they call fried rice in this town.  Soon she is telling Ego of her woes.  She knows he has been through worse situations, she wants his advice.  “But a million is nothing to you” she says finally. 

“I just pick up scrap for a living.” he jokes.  “I’m the dustbin man.”

“The rich dustbin man,” she says and sips her chapman.  If chapman is a mixture of sweet (fruit punch), sour (lime), and fizzy (soda), this one is mostly sweet, and she loves it so. 

“When the asset is rotten, then I go in.” 

She remembers a poem from her childhood, “…flies to a tree and looks around // for rotting rubbish on the ground” and thinks how her once-fresh assets have become rotting rubbish…

Ego interrupts her thoughts with “how is your musician?”

“He’s alright.  At least he doesn’t have to worry about going broke like this.”

Ego looks over her bust with greedy beady eyes.  “He’s a lucky boy.” 

“Hey, he’s not that young,” she says with a chuckle. 

“Cradle snatcher,” he says, his face laughing hard but noiselessly.  A vein bulges on his head.  It snakes from above his eyebrow up to the North Pole on his head apparently.  He fits the poem perfectly: “…hunching shoulders, old bald head // he’d like me better if I were dead.” 

The little rhyme is about a vulture.  Now she remembers a war movie - was it about Somalia or Ethiopia?  This skin-and-bones African child in the dry sand, weak, but not quite finished yet.   A vulture just a few meters away wanted to make a meal of the child.  Angelina Jolie’s character - to the rescue - shoos the vulture away and nurses the youth. 

“Who will be my Angelina?” she now wonders, feeling sorry for herself and her financial wreck.

“Yes, another stout,” Ego’s voice rouses her again from her thoughts.   They have known each other since her second year in Finance at NU, and years later they wound up in the same business school for their MBAs.  She considers that his voice was never the best thing about him, and now he has lost his good looks as well.   He could be her ugly Angelina.  She could marry the ugly vulture.  She hates the idea so much that her tummy heaves angrily.

“I have to go home.  It’s been a long day.”

“I’ll come with you,” says Ego, in a very quick response. 

She stops to watch his face for signs that he was just joking.  Still not sure, she chides, “Ego, seriously now.”

“To the car.  I’ll come with you to the car.  What’s the problem?”

“Sure,” she answers, with relief.  The anxiety in her which has just risen so suddenly again falls so very sharply, making her more tired than ever.  She needs some ice-cream or anything sugary.  She calls the waiter and asks for an ice-cream.   The restaurant has strawberry and chocolate flavours.  That would be good enough. 

He has his Guinness, she eats two scoops of ice-cream.  When they finish together, they pick up all their property – phones and keys and bags – and leave a few bills on the table.  At the car, he kisses her goodnight.  She crawls in the back of the car feeling disconnected from her mind, unlike the analytical, methodological maven that she usually is.   Grasping to arrange her thoughts, she finds the poem*:

The ugly vulture flaps and hops // pecks at scraps and walks and stops // flies to a tree and looks around // for rotting rubbish on the ground. 

He likes dead things and he pecks them clean // he’s terribly ugly, dull, and mean // hunching shoulders; old, bald head // he’d like me better if I were dead...

She remembers learning that in primary school: the class seated in pairs, the wooden desks and chairs, reciting line-by-line after their teacher during English period.   

Mr. Yellow is driving her home and wondering about the man who just pushed his madam against the back door with a vigorous kiss.  Unlike the other man at the house, this one looks old enough to be the new boss.  He is glad about that: every woman needs a man to be her proper boss at home, and every woman needs to be protected.  And the man she has at home now is too young to fit the bill.  He looks in the rearview mirror to see her slumped, asleep, in her seat.  “She is a curvy woman all over,” he thinks, and it makes him aroused.   

In a few minutes they reach the condominium apartments.  The boss enters and locks her front door, and Mr. Yellow is not needed any more.  He starts his own long journey home without the luxury of a private vehicle. 

Barack is in, smelling of gin.  She takes off her shoes and unhooks her bra before falling asleep next to him.  He takes off more of her clothes and has sex with her.  All she hears is a string of babe this, babe that, disrupting her sleep.    

In the morning she gets her corn flakes and tunes to the news on cable TV.  She has to go in to work early and work on their big deficit.  She has a headache, so Barack brings her aspirin and water.  Later he wants to join her in the bathroom.  “Time,” she complains and so he stays out.  He spreads butter on his bread and prepares his hot chocolate milk.  He talks to her all through breakfast.  “Babe, you know I never ask you for money…” he says.  It irritates her that he begs for money like a child. 

While she gets dressed for work, he keeps talking about the plan at his studio, to “release two singles,” “test the market.”  It irritates her that he has so much faith that these songs of his will make money.   The real money is not in music, the real money is in money.  That money makes more money is an obvious fact to her.  She needs to pay her staff in two weeks – another fact. 

“Babe, you look worried Babe.  Is your head still paining?”  She is mentally drawing an action plan to earn fifty thousand within a week on eighty percent working capital.  He moves in to touch her neck and forehead.   Her temperature is normal.  He combs his fingers through her expanse of superstar hair.  It pleases him how it looks just like the hair on black Americans.  They kiss with a great amount of desire.  In all this, he avoids touching her scalp where the fibers are sewn onto a rough, stiff basket.  They kiss with such an unbearable amount of desire that she makes time for love.

* Poem is attributed to a Macmillan Primary English Reader.

Financial Markets, an excellent, excellent introduction

Trust me, you will want to spend a few hours a week taking this online course that is currently available at the unbeatable price of ... an internet connection.  Financial Markets begins NOW, this week, and runs for eight weeks.  It may get addictive, like my previous Coursera courses. 

Coursera + Yale university.  Financial Markets.

Prof. Schiller (Nobel Prize in Economics in 2013) who will be teaching the course, says in the introduction "finance is a very important technology.  It has a mathematical basis.  It has a intellectual underpinning that makes it a infrastructure for our, our whole economy.  And I want this course to help people  understand this technology so that they are not buffeted by it, so they can react to the technology and its opportunities constructively in whatever walk of life they choose."

There will be a guest every week, and in week one it's Hank Greenberg (of pre-bailout AIG).  

Get started with Financial Markets. 

Moving on up

Checked the website of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, and guess what? Charts!
Three years ago, the site had just tables.

What do you say about Ololo?

"Ololo's firms emerged the highest debtors to three of the troubled banks- Finbank, Afribank and Oceanic Bank – with a combined total non-performing loan of N88.3 billion. His indebtedness (or rather that of his companies), raised eyebrows. Not a few wondered how he could have used his companies to secure such massive loans from the banks without making a mark as an entrepreneur with manufacturing concerns and businesses that create wealth and employ thousands from the labour market. The recurring question was how did he manage to instill so much confidence in the banks to get them to extend his companies such massive facilities.
...
The official, in defense of his boss said Ololo borrowed the loans in good faith and has every intention of paying. He said, Ololo could never had thought that things will go bad in the stock market and blamed the banks for egging him on and getting it wrong. "If you want to borrow money from the bank, the practice is that you provide something that is equivalent to the amount you are borrowing. But in this case, it was the share certificates that were used to collaterise the loans, so when their prices fell, he could not repay the loans. It is largely the systemic failure that is responsible for this crisis. He acted in good faith in accordance with the dictates of his enlarged clientele. He is a reputable stockbroker and portfolio manager who used his ingenuity to create liquidity in the capital market." (...Read More)

Although he's a defendant in a civil suit relating to fraud, I would pay to learn from the guy. About the markets, about ethics and the vulnerabilities of the market, about where he screwed up, about how to keep up (or come out tops) as a country/continent in the hypertraded, hyperleveraged world.
Say what's on your mind.
Check www.UPNAIRA.blogspot.com for more.
Add to your facebook notes to share with your friends.
Peace.

How are the stocks doing, really?

Nigerian Stock Exchange All-Shares Index
The Exchange maintains an All-Share Index formulated in January 1984 (January 3, 1984 = 100). Only common stocks (ordinary shares) are included in the computation of the index. The index is value-relative and is computed daily.

Current Price: 54,189.92
Current Index Prices charted on Reuters daily.
Also see Historical stock prices, since 1985, from the Securities and Exchange Commission website.

All the stocks are listed here by sector, copied from the Nigerian Stock Exchange website, nigerianstockexchange.com
SECTORS
2ND-TIER SECURITIES
AGRICULTURE
AIR SERVICES
AUTOMOBILE & TYRE
AVIATION
BANKING
BREWERIES
BUILDING MATERIALS
CHEMICAL & PAINTS
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Investing in Africa/M.East Via ETF

Carl T. Delfeld submits: Do we need an exchange-traded fund for Africa? Why would anyone want to invest in Africa with its high levels of poverty, corruption and bureaucratic roadblocks? Nicholas Vardy notes that between 1995 and 2005, African stocks showed compound annual growth of 22%. Last year, the stock market in Kenya rallied 46%, and the local index is up 9x in dollar terms over the past ten years. In 2006, equities in Morocco were up 75%, 69% in Uganda, and 55% in Botswana. Nigeria's stock market's capitalization has doubled over the 12 months to about $45 billion.
Then there is the China factor. The Chinese leadership has targeted China as a region where there is a great power vacuum they wish to fill not to mention ample natural resources to fuel its 10% plus economic growth. Trade between China and Africa soared 40% to a record $55.5 billion last year. Direct investment has reached a cumulative $6.5 billion and a third of Chinese oil now comes from Africa.
Nigeria has been doing particularly well with a GDP that more than doubled between 2003 and 2006 and thanks to strong oil exports has foreign exchange reserves of just under $50 billion. These markets are, of course, rather thin making an ETF problematic but don't be surprised to see an African ETF in the next year or two...Yahoo notes

Note:
There is already One: GAF
Profile: The investment seeks to track the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the S&P/Citigroup BMI Middle East & Africa Index. The fund will invest at least 90% of assets in the securities that comprise the index. The index is a market capitalization weighted index that defines and measures the investable universe of publicly traded companies domiciled in emerging markets in the Middle East and Africa. It includes companies located in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. The fund is nondiversified

Trade African Equities

If you add a risky stock into a portfolio that is already risky, how is the overall portfolio risk affected?
a. It becomes riskier
b. It becomes less risky
c. Overall risk is unaffected
d. It depends on the stock
Answer - it depends, whether the risky portfolio and risky stock moves in the same direction.

I am sure you have heard about the meltdown in the US stock market yesterday triggered by a down day in China and other factors. An important thing to note is the fact that African market including the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange) was not affected.

This is a reason to invest in African equities!