AfDB to establish Entrepreneurship Bank in Nigeria

The African Development Bank (AfDB) plans to establish an entrepreneurship investment bank in Nigeria.

According to the President of the Bank, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, the move is in alignment with President Bola Tinubu’s plans and vision for young people in Nigeria.

Adesina, who was also attending the new global financial pact summit in France’s Palais Brongniart, spoke after he paid a visit to President Tinubu over the weekend.

The AfDB president said he was impressed with the president’s plans and vision for Nigeria, pledging his support to the ad- ministration to achieve its goals. “I discussed with his excellency the president a couple of things.

First of course is agriculture; to see what we can do to support the government with regard to the president’s vision in agriculture,” Adesina said.

“We discussed the spe- cial agro-industrial processing zone for which we already have about $520 million for Nigeria and how we are going to make sure that the project gets accelerated to give quick wins to the president.

“We also talked about the power sector and how we will support his effort and vision.

”The president wants to make sure there is an improvement in the access to electricity in Nigeria, and therefore, he talked to us about how we can support him and we gave him the assurance that we will support significantly in the power sector in Nigeria.”

Adesina also commended Tinubu’s desire to impact the industrial sector. “I discussed with the president also with regard to the industrial sector in Nigeria. I was impressed with his vision in terms of trying to grow the industrial sector in Nigeria and also having an export- oriented industrial manufacturing stance, which is very important for growing the forex in Nigeria,” he added.

“We also discussed the youth. I have heard him speak quite a lot about young people — his heart for young people and what he wants to support them.

“He asked for our support in regard to what we can do about that and I explained to the president that we will support him with the establishment of a youth entrepreneurship investment bank in Nigeria. “This is going to be new financial institutions that will support the access to financing for the business of young people. He had the desire to grow the wealth for young people which is actually very good.”