Business

AfDB urges African countries to finance large scale youth-led businesses

Eyewitness reporter

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has called on governments and private sectors in Africa to grow, finance and support large scale youth-led businesses in the continent.

President of the AfDB, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said this at a virtual High-Level Roundtable on Scaling up Financing for Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Africa from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on Monday.

The webinar was tagged the “Rationale for the Creation of Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks”.

The AfDB had approved its Job for Youth in Africa Strategy to help create 25 million direct and indirect jobs and empower 50 million youth over a 10-year period.

The strategy is aimed at reducing barriers to youth innovation and entrepreneurship and addresses the issues of social and economic insecurity.

This is with the aim of preventing illegal migration, terrorism and political instability among African youths.

The bank also established a multi-donor Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Trust Fund, funded with 40 million dollars by Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Italy and the UK.

Adesina said that the capacities and entrepreneurial drive of the youth in Africa needed to be unleashed to create jobs, noting that the youth must be supported to go beyond job seeking.

“We must grow, finance and support large scale successes of youth-led businesses in Africa.

“Existing financial institutions have failed to meet the needs of this rapidly growing population of the continent.

“This is due to lack of appropriate financing instruments; archaic credit risk assessments; focus on collaterals which the youth do not have; and lack of long-term financing horizon.

“That can deploy different types of financing instruments, from debt, equity, quasi-equity and guarantees over the life cycle of the businesses of the youth.”

Adesina said the continent had several programmes directed at improving the skills of the youth by countries, supported by bilateral and multilateral finance institutions.

He noted that though such programmes might have helped to impart some skills to support entrepreneurship, the youth still faced financing challenges to turn their ideas into viable businesses.

“It is time to put the capital of Africa at risk on behalf of the youth

“It is time to create new financial ecosystems that are able to support the businesses of the youth, grow them, and unlock the latent demand for financing by millions of the youth.

“This will help to turn Africa’s demographic asset into an economic asset for Africa and for that, we must nurture the businesses of young people.

“We must tackle market failures and missing institutions that prevent the youth entrepreneurs from reaching their potential,” he said.

He noted that by developing a new financial ecosystem around the youth, that was systemic, scalable and sustainable, Africa would create youth-based wealth and jobs across the continent.

Also in her address, Ms Arancha Laya, Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Spain, said Africa’s demographic dividends would only come about when the youth were gainfully employed.

Laya noted that entrepreneurship was recognised as a driver for economic growth but pointed out that there were too many hurdles to intra-African trade.

“Spain, therefore, welcomes the AfDB Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Initiative geared towards unlocking entrepreneurship and promoting the growth of businesses of the youth.

“This will be a key instrument to spur youth-led innovations and business ventures and at the same time create quality and decent jobs and turn Africa’s youth demographic advantage into a clear and strong asset for the continent.

“In this endeavour, I believe it will be crucial to give youth access to appropriate financing mechanisms, capacity building and implementing legal and institutional reforms to address the barriers that young people face in accessing financial corporate markets,” she said.

The minister further suggested a focus on reviewing the criteria for client risk; facilitating easier access to savings and credits; insistence on financial education, access to information and the creation of support networks for young entrepreneurship.

She further suggested the advancement of the African Continental Free Trade Area, “and we proceed with removing red tape to doing business in Africa”.

“We need to act now, we need to do it right. This is what Spain has proposed to do with its Focus Africa 2023 strategy; focus on youth entrepreneurship and unlock all its potentials.”

Participants held discussions on the bank’s early-stage proposal for Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks, with a focus on its rationale and resource requirements.

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Business

Access bank laments cargo glut, financial losses to importers caused by its service glitch

– restores customs transactions on its platform

Gloria Odion

Access Bank Plc has expressed its regret over the accrued demurrages to importers, cargo glut at the port which the temporary disruption of its services on its ACCESS PAY(B’Odogwu) platform has caused majority of importers and their agents.

The bank’s interactive platform with Customs went down for three days between November 10th to 12th, 2025, causing agony and anguish among the freight forwarders who could not conduct transactions on the platform with the Customs, resulting to mounting demurrages and cargo glut at the port.

However in a statement made available to newsmen, the bank confirmed the restoration of its customs transaction services and urged its distraught custom to come forward with their Customs payment.

Access bank further explained that the glitch occured due to a connectivity issue between Access Bank’s network and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) system.

The glitch temporarily hindered the processing of payments and related transactions via the ACCESS PAY (B’ODOGWU) platform.

“The issue was fully resolved on November 12th, 2025, and normal service operations have since been completely restored.

“Customers can now process Customs-related payments and transactions seamlessly through Access Bank channels,” the statement read.

The bank expressed regret over the inconvenience caused, acknowledging that the downtime led to delays and concerns among customers, particularly regarding demurrage charges.

Access Bank assured stakeholders that proactive measures have been put in place to prevent a recurrence, reiterating its commitment to service reliability and customer satisfaction.

“Access Bank appreciates the patience and understanding of its customers during the period of disruption and thanks them for their continued trust and partnership,” the statement concluded.

However, despite the service restoration by the bank, its customers are still aggrieved over what they described as unwarranted extra charges in form of accrued demurrages which they were made to incur and which they claimed have added additional costs to the clearing of their trapped cargo at the port.

Business

Tantita Security dazzles at OTC, USA

– as Lokpobiri seeks global presence of the company

Gloria Odion

The Tantita Security Nigeria Limited has dazzled the participants at the

Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) held in the United States of America (USA) with array of its cutting edge services which it showcased at the annual event.

Curious participants flooded the stand of the security company, obviously impressed by its technology – driven services.

It could be recalled that the company currently carries out surveillance on the network of oil pipelines in Nigeria which has improved the security at the critical oil infrastructure and boosted the country’s oil production.

An elated Executive Director, Technical and Operations of the security company, Capt. Warredi Enisouh enthused “Nigeria have never been seen in this light here.

” We are currently overwhelmed and swarmed with people who want to hear our story,” he noted.

However, the President of Ijaw Youth Council, Jonathan Lokpobiri, called on Tantita Security to extend its services outside the shores of Nigeria, even as he commended the company for its laudable strides at the global event.

Lokpobiri visited the Tantita Security Nigeria Limited stand at the event and said there was a need for the company to extend its services to the other parts of the globe.

“This is the stand of Tantita Security Nigeria Limited at the ongoing Offshore Technology Conference in America, we want to see Tantita in China, we want to see Tantita in Europe and in other African countries.

“As long as security is concerned, Tantita Security Nigeria Limited should be consulted.

Speaking further he said, “From what I have seen on ground here, all the gadgets, and the slides of how the company carries out its operations, I have no doubts at all of the capacity and capability of the company to deliver, especially when you take into consideration what they have done back in Nigeria.

“They have been able to drastically increase Nigeria’s oil production through effective monitoring and policing the country’s oil pipelines and other oil facilities,” he said.

Business

“You lied” – FG lambasts cement manufacturers over hike in product price

Ahmed Dangiwa

The Eyewitness reporter

The Federal Government has picked holes in the reasons proffered by the cement manufacturers for the sudden jump in the price of the product.

It could be recalled that a few days ago, cement recorded an astronomical increase in price as the 50kg of the essential building materials climbed from N5000 to between N10,000 to N15,000, depending on the location in the country.

Concerned by the sudden hike, which has elicited uproar among already depressed Nigerians, the Federal government summoned the major cement manufacturers and other merchants of building materials in the country such as Dangote Cement, BUA and Lafarge, to an emergency meeting.

Addressing the manufacturers at the meeting, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, dismissed the reasons given by the cement manufacturers, describing them as untenable.

Whereas the manufacturers blamed the cost of gas and mining equipment for the hike, Dangiwa said key input materials for cement production such as limestone, clay, silica sand, and gypsum, sourced within the nation’s borders, should not be dollar-rated.

He said the price of gas that manufacturers are using as an excuse was not tenable because gas is a raw material found within the country.

The minister further declared that the excuse of an increase in mining equipment should not come up because equipment bought by the manufacturers has been used for decades and not purchased every day.

He however threatened that the federal government may be forced to throw open the borders and allow importation of cement to flood the Nigerian market in a bid to crash the prices of the community should the manufacturers refuse to reduce their prices.

He warned that the cement manufacturers should not push the government into taking this decision which he believed would push them out of business.

The minister said the border was closed to the importation of cement to help local manufacturers.

However, he noted that if the government decides to open the border for mass importation, prices of cement would crash and local manufacturers would be gravely affected.

The minister, who called on the manufacturers to be more patriotic, said BUA Cement, for instance, has been willing and is still willing as at the last time he spoke with them, to crash the price of their cement, lower than the N7000, N8000 agreed by the manufacturers and he sees no reason why the others should not do same.

“The challenges you speak of, many countries are facing the same challenges and some even worse than that but as patriotic citizens, we have to rally around whenever there is a crisis to change the situation.

“The gas price you spoke of, we know that we produce gas in the country. The only thing you can say is that maybe it is not enough.

“Even if you say about 50 percent of your production cost is spent on gas prices, we still produce gas in Nigeria. It’s just that some of the manufacturers take advantage of the situation.

“As for the mining equipment that you mentioned, you buy equipment and it takes years and you are still using it,” he said.

Earlier, Group Chief Commercial Officer of Dangote Cement, Rabiu Umar blamed the high cost of gas and mining equipment for the hike in cement price.

He said: “It is safe to say we are all Nigerians and we are all facing the current head weight that is happening. I would like to speak on the popular belief that most of the raw materials to produce cement are available locally.

“While we have limestone and in some cases, we have gypsum and some cases coal, the reality is that it takes a lot of forex-related items to produce cement.