Billion-dollar deep seaport opened in Nigeria

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nigeria opened a billion-dollar Chinese-built deep seaport in Lagos on Monday, which is expected to ease congestion at the country's ports and help it become an African hub for transshipment, handling cargoes in transit for other destinations.

President Muhammadu Buhari has made building infrastructure a key pillar of his government's economic policy, and hopes that this will help his ruling party win votes during next month's presidential election.

The new Lekki Deep Sea Port is 75% owned by the China Harbour Engineering Company and Tolaram group, with the balance shared between the Lagos state government and the Nigerian Ports Authority.

"This is a transformative project, game changer project. This project could create at least 200,000 jobs," Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria Cui Jianchun told Reuters after the port was commissioned by Buhari.

China is among the largest bilateral lenders to Nigeria and has funded rail, roads and power stations.

By Seun Sanni, Reuters

Video - Nigeria's durum prices rise as demand increases, imports drop

Durum wheat prices are on the rise in Nigeria as import volumes fall and local demand continues rising. Experts say it is time the country strives to become self sufficient in wheat production.

CGTN

Nigeria, Canada to strengthen trade investments

Delegates from Canada have called for collaboration with Nigeria to strengthen trade opportunities and investment in the various sectors of both countries to grow their economies.

The delegates made the call at the Canada-Nigeria Trade Mission event organised by Africa Canada Trade and Investment Venture, held in Lagos.

While speaking on the theme: “Exploring New Opportunities for Canada-Nigeria Trade and Investment,” the delegates said both countries should collaborate and invest in Fintech, housing, technology, oil and gas, start ups and other sectors to improve on their economies.

The Chief Growth Officer and Legal Counsel, Vida Group, Canada, Huge Goodday, said there is strong appetite to strengthen trade relations between Nigeria and Canada because there are a whole lot of opportunities to tap into.

He said with Nigeria’s huge population and a growing middle class, there is a lot of potential, such as in housing, oil and gas, technology and Fintech investments, which Canada creates a stable economy from.

Goodday said both countries face the same challenges, which makes it important for collaboration on solutions to harness these potentials and opportunities

The Chief Executive Officer, Africa Canada Trade and Investment Venture, Kenneth Oguzie, said there are lots of sectors to explore such as, real estate, labour, energy, education and partnership on critical components with Canada as a trade partner to Africa and Nigeria.

He said there is a need for various stakeholders to come together to talk about the opportunities existing between Canada and Nigeria trade and highlight how to mitigate the challenges or barriers.

“Nigeria has business opportunities, as well as for start ups, technology, mining, renewable energy. We have our Canadian delegates as well people from the private and public sector here to talk about those opportunities. When the bilateral trade agreement between Canada and Nigeria becomes ratified we will see more progress,” he said.

The Director of International Affairs, Lagos Chamber of Commerce, Temitope Akintunde, said Nigeria’s population of about 200 million people presents a very good opportunity for every foreign investor to invest in the country.

Akintunde noted that exploring Fintech is one of those key areas that Nigeria can start dealing with in terms of trade relations, especially for start ups as there are lots of opportunities out there, which Nigeria should take advantage of with Canada’s trade relations.

“A lot of bilateral agreements have already been signed between the governments of the two countries. It is just left for us to look at those information, get them and tap into those opportunities so those agreements are not just lying there,” she said.

The President, Colindale Consulting Business Solutions, Damian Maclnnis, said breaking the barriers between Canada and Africa is important, as it will help build economies.

He said having joint venture investments between Canada and Nigeria is the quickest and most efficient way to grow the economies of both countries.

By Adaku Onyenucheya

The Guardian

Video - Nigeria’s ponmo cuisine under threat as the leather sector seeks growth

The Nigerian government is looking to expand its leather export sector which brings in 500 million U.S. dollars annually as it diversifies its economy away from oil and gas. But the plan is a threat to a local delicacy from the cooked cow skin popularly known as “ponmo”.

CGTN 

Related story: Nigeria to ban consumption of cow skin ‘ponmo’ for lacking nutritional value

 

Cameroon, Nigeria request to join Ivory-Ghana cocoa initiative

Cameroon and Nigeria requested to join the Cote d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative (CIGCI), a joint body spearheading the interests of the two countries in the cocoa trade, the head of the initiative Alex Assanvo said on Wednesday.

The initiative was set up after a 2018 declaration by Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s first and second-largest cocoa producers, on willingness to define a common sustainable cocoa strategy that would raise prices paid to farmers.

It was created with the view of including other African countries.

Representatives from Cameroon and Nigeria were invited to a CIGCI meeting in Abidjan to begin the process of joining the initiative, Assanvo told reporters after the meeting.

“With Cameroon and Nigeria we are going to represent around two-thirds of global cocoa production,” Yves Brahima Kone, chief executive of the Ivory Coast Cocoa and Coffee Council, said at the meeting.

“This will allow us to have more leeway in discussions with the industry on imposing a decent price for our cocoa farmers.”

Reuters

Japan's Daikin to build air conditioners in Nigeria in renewed push

Japan's Daikin Industries Ltd (6367.T) will begin assembling air conditioners in Nigeria as it renews a push into Africa that had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a regional head said on Thursday.

"We are very soon going to have a factory in Nigeria," Kanwal Jeet Jawa, the head of Daikin's operations in India and East Africa, told Reuters.

Rather than building a plant, Daikin is using space in a facility provided by a local distributor in the West African nation, he said.

In East African countries, including Tanzania and Kenya, Daikin is aiming to become the leading seller of air conditioners, chillers and other cooling equipment by 2025.

The company is looking to replicate its success in India, where it has beaten the likes of South Korea's LG Electronics Inc (066570.KS) to take top market share amid rapid market expansion driven by the country's economic growth, Jawa said.

Daikin's production capacity in India is set to almost double in 2023 with the opening of a new factory, allowing it to ship equipment to Africa that is more affordable and better suited to local conditions than air conditioners the Japanese company makes elsewhere, Jawa said.

"For East Africa, we will continue to supply finished products produced in India," a Daikin spokesperson said.

By Tim Kelly and Mayu Sakoda

Reuters

Related story: Japan gives Nigeria $1 billion grant

 

Nigeria displaces South Africa as Korea’s biggest African trade partner

Nigeria has displaced South Africa as the major trading partner of the Republic of Korea on the African continent, Director, Korea-Africa Foundation, Lyeo Woon-ki has said.

Lyeo, who disclosed this in Abuja at a media parley, explained that trade between Nigeria and Korea was two billion dollars in 2021 but that the present figures indicate that the trade volume for 2022 has reached over $1.5 billion as of June this year which surpasses the trade volume between Korea and South Africa.

“The trade volume between Nigeria and Korea is bigger than between Korea and South Africa. In 2021, the figure was around $2 billion and by the half of this year, the figure has gone beyond $1.5 billion. All of these happened despite the COVID-19 pandemic and limited trading. We are sure it will be about two billion dollars by the end of the current year. The balance of trade between both countries is almost equal,” he stated. He added that the Korea-Africa Foundation was established to foster business and cultural cooperation between Korea and the continent.

Lyeo lamented that while Koreans are eager to come to Nigeria for business and cultural activities, the news about the country that is available to the Korean public is unpalatable.

He said: “Unfortunately, the news out there about Nigeria portrays the country as a dangerous place to live. However, my experience is completely different from what I read before coming. I have met a lot of Nigerians these last few days since I came into the country and I can say they are warm and receptive people. Nigeria needs to do a lot more to portray the image of Nigeria abroad.”

Lyeo disclosed that the Foundation will collaborate with the Nigeria Chamber of Commerce and Industry with a view to deepening trade cooperation between the two countries. On his part, the Ambassador of Korea to Nigeria, Kim Young-Chae, described Nigerian youths as vibrant and technology savvy.

“Last year, the embassy here in Abuja sponsored some children to Lagos to interact with Korean companies such as LG and Samsung to see first-hand what they do. We want Nigerian youths to understand our culture while their counterparts also understand the culture of Nigeria. This will foster understanding and cooperation between the people of both countries. We are going to replace that this year as part of efforts to showcase what the embassy of Korea is doing here in Nigeria,” he said.

Young-chae revealed that Nigeria and the Korean Republic are working on signing a military pact to boost the security of Nigeria. He said: “Korea has emerged as one of the strongest military formations in the world. The feat was achieved basically as a survival strategy because of the nature of our existence. I think it will be good if Nigeria and the Korean Republic strike an agreement on military cooperation. Indeed, the Nigerian Minister of Defence had paid a visit to Seoul recently in that regard. I hope this is done very soon as Nigeria continues to battle Boko Haram and banditry.”

By Collins Olayinka

The Guardian

Video - Nigerian palm oil farmers seek government input to maximize output

Nigeria is one of the largest producers of palm oil globally with small-scale farmers being essential to the country's annual output of more than one million metric tons. However, the farmers and industry players are struggling to realize their full potential due to various reasons. CGTN Africa spoke to stakeholders in the Nigerian capital Abuja to find out the reasons behind their struggles and what can be done to improve it.

Video - Nigeria bans foreigners from buying farm produce directly from local famers

 

Nigeria has banned foreigners from purchasing agricultural products directly from local farmers. This means that only registered local buyers can purchase from farm gates - and then sell to foreigners. The government says the policy is geared towards mitigating the exploitation of local farmers. CGTN's Kelechi Emekalam reports.

Nigerian families struggle to survive as food prices soar

With inflation rising around the world as the global economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, soaring prices are having dramatic consequences in countries like Nigeria.

The number of people living in poverty in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous nation with 210 million inhabitants – was already among the highest in the world.

But as Nigeria has been battered by the double economic effect of low global oil prices and the pandemic, the World Bank estimates the country’s soaring inflation and food prices pushed another seven million people into poverty in 2021.

Food prices have increased more than 22 percent since the start of the coronavirus crisis, according to official statistics.

For many people, feeding their family has become a daily challenge.

“Every day, during consultations, there are five or seven children that suffer from malnutrition,” says Emiolo Ogunsola, head of the nutrition department at Massey Street children’s hospital in a poor district in Lagos Island.

“I bet in a few months or a year, more children will be malnourished.”

Even before the pandemic and the surge in food costs, Nigeria’s nutrition figures were alarming: One in three Nigerian children suffered stunted growth due to a bad diet.

As a result, close to 17 million children in Nigeria are undernourished, giving the country the highest level of malnutrition in Africa and the second-highest in the world.

Al Jazeera

Nigeria's Dangote to start exporting fertiliser to U.S., Brazil

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote’s new fertiliser plant near Lagos will export its first shipment in late June or early July, to Louisiana, while the majority of exports from the plant are expected to go to Brazil, Dangote said on Tuesday.

The new plant at the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos State, designed to manufacture 3 million tonnes of urea per year, will also be able to supply all the major markets in sub-Saharan Africa, Dangote told a virtual economic forum hosted by Qatar.

“Apart from meeting the domestic demand, we are going to be able to earn quite a lot of money exporting the goods to the South American countries,” he said.

Many in Nigeria also hope the Dangote plant will help alleviate chronically low crop yields in Africa’s most populous country, which are partly due to insufficient access to fertiliser.

According to the World Bank, Nigeria consumed around 20 kg of fertiliser per hectare of arable land in 2018, compared with 73 kg in South Africa and 393 kg in China.

Nigeria’s Central Bank bars the use of its foreign exchange for fertiliser imports as part of a raft of controls aimed at boosting domestic production. 

Reuters

Nigeria needs to fix the issues in its dairy value chain

Nigeria spends $2.5bn importing dairy milk annually, to cover for the nearly 60% shortfall in primary production.

While the issues derive their root from a historically outdated model for the breeding and raising of cattle, they are also a result of willful ignorance and lack of technical knowledge on the value chain for this sector, which has a ripple effect across the board.

Milk is the third most consumed food item in Nigeria, however, in 2020 alone, the country imported $534m worth of refined sugar from Spain, Brazil, France and India, and $2.5bn worth of dairy milk from the Netherlands, UK, US, Australia, and others, to power its value chain for everything from evaporated milk, pasteurised milk, to yoghurt, cheese, chocolate, and more.
What is the problem with the dairy sector in Nigeria?

Why are we unable to solve the problem of milk and all its attendant derivatives, which to a large extent contributed to the $10bn the Netherlands earned exporting milk around the world in 2020?

Nigeria has 13 major breeds of cattle, and of them, the White Fulani breed has the most dairy of them all. What has happened is a situation where, because of the outdated mode of handling these cows, there has been no effort to adopt modern global best practices for cross-breeding and calving of these cows through artificial insemination (a process where semen is used from a cattle with a higher production output to fertilise the eggs of a lower producing cow, for the purpose of producing a new line that’s disease resistant, adjusted to the weather, and feeds available in that region of rearing).


What does the country need?

Nigeria requires a comprehensive ranching development plan that focuses the task of primary production on two levers:

Cooperatives who are properly trained in improved methods and global best practices;

Commercial companies that are able to invest in the kind of capital required for building a ranch that addresses all the issues in the supply value chain.

There is also a need for quality veterinary care from professional doctors familiar with cattle specifically, a properly designed irrigation model built into the metal fabrication compartments of the ranch pen, a weaning hose used for automatic extraction of milk from the udder of the dairy cattle, a storage tank that can store the milk at a particular temperature that prevents fermentation and building of bacteria in the liquid before it’s taken by reefer vans to the milk collection centres, and radio frequency identification (RfID) tags built into the monitor braces to track everything from distance covered to amount of feed consumed.
Most importantly, there is a need for a vertically integrated model for developing a feed lot for maize, which remains the best and most nutritious source of feed for cattle globally.


Why are we not addressing these issues?

Until 2018, government policy did now allow for backward integration through import substitution. In doing so, it would have made the subsidies the EU pays to its farmers, and the tariff it pays to Nigeria under the WTO tariff rules for importing dairy milk, unsustainable compared to developing this full vertical in Nigeria. What we have had has always been the lazy man’s approach of importing primary products for processing to meeting the food demands of Nigeria.
Bottom line

I see a stream of opportunities for African entrepreneurs who are bold enough to invest between $500,000 and $1m in the development of key areas of the value chain, and this is because dairy milk can be processed into a variety of things.

One of the curses that have collapsed our food security in Africa is the fallacy that you have to be involved only in primary production for you to take advantage of the supply chain.

And even at this level that holds only 25% of the whole value, we have failed to do the needful. The introduction of tractors, boom sprayers, harvesters and the like will improve turnaround time and enable to better practise precision agriculture.

I’m hoping we pay attention in Africa and I’m hoping we understand that development is not being able to afford imports. It’s more about the ability to substitute local demand and price exports for more value than the imports.

By Kelvin Ayebaefie Emmanuel 

The Africa Report

Nigeria is quietly rewriting fintech’s rulebook

It all started with a tweet on New Year’s Day, 2016. Joshua Chibueze, a computer scientist and entrepreneur based in Lagos, Nigeria, floated the idea of digitising the kolo, a wooden box similar to a piggy bank, used in many Nigerian homes to save money.

Chibueze had heard that, with enough persistence, people could set aside significant sums, but when he started using a kolo himself he realised how easy it was for upwardly mobile young Nigerians like him to forget – or simply lack the discipline – to save every single day. Worse: as Nigeria’s economy was getting increasingly cashless, an old box did not sound like an effective saving device – and was a security liability.

Hence the idea of a digital kolo. Odunayo Eweniyi, a fellow entrepreneur (and Twitter friend of Chibueze’s), was the first to reply to his tweet on the subject. “The conversation progressed from digitising to automating the kolo,” Eweniyi recalls. The pair teamed up and – alongside a third co-founder, Somto Ifezue – built an online savings platform to help medium-to-low-earning Nigerians save small amounts daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. Launched as PiggyBank.ng in February 2016, today it is known as PiggyVest.

Marketing solely on social media for the first couple of years, PiggyVest was able to help Nigerians sign up easily using their smartphones, automate savings and earn interest, with rates between six and ten per cent. By the end of 2018, PiggyVest had helped over 53,000 users save close to a billion Nigerian naira (£2,000,000).

In 2015, two per cent of Nigerians controlled 90 per cent of banks’ total deposits, according to the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, a government-backed financial agency. One year later, Nigerian financial inclusion advocacy group EFInA found that only 36.9 million adult Nigerians – out of a population of over 195 million – had access to a bank account. Nigeria was grappling with a huge unbanked population and PiggyVest set to cater to this demographic blending technology and traditional saving methods.

“The thing about the unbanked is that they’re actually banked, they’re just not formally banked,” says Eweniyi. “Banking is necessary to them but the banks themselves haven’t proven to be.” She believes that Nigeria’s financial exclusion problem will be solved by working with people rather than offering top-down solutions.

That is why Piggy`vest has decided to borrow well-tested models from Africa’s financial history: after its debut as a digital kolo, in May 2018 the company launched a new feature – called Smart Target – modelled af

ter the traditional saving practice of ajo. First recorded in the 19th century, but rumoured to have been around for longer among the Yoruba ethnic group, an ajo consists of a group of colleagues, friends, or religious peers, each contributing the same amount of money at an agreed frequency to hit a financial target. At the end of each savings cycle – typically, a month – one member of the group receives the entire saving pot; the ajo goes on until everyone has received their payout.

“My mum belonged to at least four ajo groups, one of which was at the university where she was a lecturer,” says Eweniyi, whose parents were both academics. “My parents relied on ajo to pay their way through our education and this is how most middle-class families I know survived.”

PiggyVest’s take on ajo, however, tweaks the tradition to fit the times: Smart Target lets people save towards a common goal together as an online community, but unlike ajo, users are in control of how much they contribute and where the payout goes.

PiggyVest is just one of a new breed of Nigerian fintech companies. “Companies like PiggyVest have moved to push savings and budgeting consciousness, by gamifying the process and including a reward system for users who follow through,” says Modupe Odele, a lawyer and startup consultant based in Washington, DC. She predicts that in the near future, Nigeria’s fintech industry will start broadening its scope.

“We have payments, we have savings and these are great, but there's still a lot of financial technology that is ripe for exploration,” Odele says. 

By Kiki Mordi

Wired

Related stories: Nigerians Are Using Bitcoin to Bypass Trade Hurdles With China

Why Bitcoin has been so successful in Nigeria

The re-inventors of banking in Nigeria

Video - Strawberry farming in Nigeria

Strawberry farming in Nigeria is currently an untapped goldmine. Thwe fruits cultivation is mostly done in the North Central state of Plateau due to the cold climate there.And now young Nigerians are turning to strawberry farming as a viable source of income.

Rising Food Costs Add to Misery of Nigeria’s High Unemployment

Nigerian merchant Feyintola Bolaji, struggling with stagnant earnings and dwindling sales, is now being squeezed by the ever increasing prices demanded by her food suppliers, leading her to cut down on the amount she can put on her own family’s table.

Bolaji’s belt tightening is being shared by millions across Africa’s most populous nation. Not long after Nigeria’s statistics agency revealed that one in three people in the continent’s largest economy were unemployed, on Thursday it announced that food inflation has accelerated at the highest pace in 15 years, compounding the misery of many households.

“It is really bad, I can’t simply afford to give my children what they really need in terms of food,” said Bolaji, a mother of three in her 50s based in the southwestern city of Ibadan. “I try to make them get the nutrients they need as growing children, but it is not enough,” she said, adding “I have had to cut down on meat and fish.”

Insurgency, unrest, and President Muhammadu Buhari’s government’s stand on food imports in a nation where more than half the population lives on less than $2 a day, are issues worsening food insecurity in the African country. Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has robbed 70% of Nigerians of some form of income, according to a Covid-19 impact survey published by the statistics agency last month.

Food inflation rose to 22.95% in March, caused by wide-ranging price increases across items such as cereals, yam, meat, fish and fruits. Those soaring costs have been in part blamed on a worsening conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria’s agriculture belt that the Buhari has struggled to quash.

The unrest, combined with the more than decade-long Boko Haram insurgency in the north, a weakening currency and higher fuel prices have also contributed to rising food prices, according to SBM Intelligence, a Nigerian research firm.

The situation has also been exacerbated by import restrictions on certain staples, such as rice, that have remained in place despite Buhari reopening Nigeria’s land borders in December following a 16-month shutdown in an attempt to end rampant smuggling.

Food prices will remain elevated until the security crisis, which has prevented farmers from returning to their land, is resolved, said Cheta Nwanze, a lead partner with SBM Intelligence. That’s “unless the government does the sensible thing and allows food imports to happen,” he said.

Until then Nigerians, who already spend more than half their earnings on food, have had to cut down. Just over 50% of all households reported reduced consumption between July and December last year due to the twin pressures of falling wages and rising food costs, according to Nigeria’s statistics agency.

Kemi Adedigba, a 42-year-old freelance writer living in Lagos, the country’s financial hub, is among those who has been hit by that double-whammy. Adedigba has two growing teenagers to feed, but is struggling with a steady drop in work even as her monthly food bill climbed by almost 70% since December.

“You are lucky if you get recurring gigs with the way the economy is going down the toilet,” she said. “It is a nightmare.”

By Anthony Osae-Brown and Ruth Olurounbi

Bloomberg

Nigeria generating huge revenue from coconut oil export

The export of coconut oil and its derivatives have continued to generate huge revenue for Nigeria, as the country recorded at least $150 million in 2020 alone, an official said on Thursday.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Sabo Nanono said in a statement seen by Xinhua that coconut has so far proved to be a major non-oil export foreign exchange earner for Nigeria.

Coconut, Nanono said, currently accounts for 10 percent of Nigeria’s agricultural exports, and by the end of this year, it is expected to generate more than 250 million dollars.

It is also the means of livelihood for more than 500,000 households, as well as women and youths, in the country, he said.

The West African country has now increased the volume of production of coconut to an average of 250,000 metric tons per annum, the minister explained.

“In 2016, Nigeria produced 283,774 metric tons and the demands for the crop have been on the increase, growing upwards to more than 500 percent in the last decade,” he added.

Coconut is grown in 22 out of Nigeria’s 36 states, with Lagos being the largest producer, according to official data.

Xinhua

Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala poised to be first woman and first African Director General of the WTO after U.S. too decides to back her

Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former two-time finance minister and former managing director of the World Bank, is poised to become the next Director General (DG) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The 164 nations comprising the Geneva-based body cleared the last hurdle to arrive at a consensus on its next leader, the first woman and first African in its 26-year history, when the U.S. decided on January 5 to back Okonjo-Iweala. The WTO’s General Council is expected to formalise her position for a four-year term.

Earlier, South Korea’s Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee, whose nomination the Donald Trump administration had supported, withdrew from the race, ending the long tussle that had narrowed down to the two women after six other candidates had been eliminated by September. A doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy was backed in October by the 27 European Union (E.U.) states and African and Caribbean nations, but was opposed by the Trump administration.

Okonjo-Iweala, who was until recently chairperson of the board of Gavi, the U.N.-backed public-private alliance to develop vaccines for low-income countries, had faced a stiff contest from within the African region. Besides an Egyptian nominee whom the African Union had initially backed, Kenya’s

former Trade Minister who has served as chair of the WTO’s general council, was also in the running. The global body has been engaged in a search for leadership since the premature departure in August of Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo. The U.S. suggestion for an interim head in Alan wolff, one of the four Deputy Directors General, was vetoed by China.

While Okonjo-Iweala is likely to commence her stint under relatively favourable circumstances in view of Washington’s renewed commitment to multilateral institutions, the organisation is confronted by many unprecedented challenges in its history. Arguably the most urgent priority for the incoming DG would be to fill vacancies to the panel of judges to the appellate body that adjudicates disputes among nations. The process has stalled since 2019 on account of systematic U.S. opposition under Donald Trump to approve fresh nominations on the grounds that most of the rulings handed by the WTO had gone against Washington.

Undoing the damage to global trade flows owing to the U.S-China bilateral disputes from the Trump era is another extremely contentious and delicate area. Washington had reacted strongly to the potential erosion of its global dominance — invoking national security provisions to slap punitive tariffs on steel and aluminium imports — to buttress Donald Trump’s nationalist “America first” agenda. Two decades after the country’s entry into the WTO, China’s quest to be accorded the status of a market economy is a subject of litigation as successive U.S. administrations and the E.U. states dispute a provision in Beijing’s treaty of accession to the world body. The upgrade would allow Chinese exports to be compared to its domestic prices rather than with higher third country rates when anti-dumping cases are brought against Beijing.

Western allies have also alleged that Chinese state-subsidies to domestic manufacturers and stringent terms on technology transfer for western firms seeking market access create unfair competition and distort global commerce. Beijing, which has emerged as the world’s second largest economic power, on the other hand, makes no secret of its quest for global economic, military and technological supremacy.

These sensitive issues could reverberate in multilateral negotiations on reforms to the WTO structure and further expansion of the global trade agenda. Okonjo-Iweala would have to exert her diplomatic skills to enable the principal players — the U.S., China, the E.U. and countries from the global south — to harmonise their positions. While uncertainty lingers over the WTO’s trajectory, it is hard to over-estimate its relevance today to counter economic protectionism around the world, as populism and narrow nationalism hold sway. The complexities of shaping a global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change underscore the imperative need for concerted efforts to reshape humanity’s common priorities.

By Garimella Subramaniam

Frontline

Related stories: Korean Ends WTO Bid, Clearing Path for Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala

Former Nigerian minister Okonjo-Iweala dragged into $2 billion scandal

Nigeria to push back on U.S. rejection of WTO candidate

Okonjo-Iweala is Africa's finance minister of the year

Fortune magazine lists Okonjo-Iweala in top 50 greatest world leaders 

Korean Ends WTO Bid, Clearing Path for Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala

South Korean Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee withdrew her bid to lead the World Trade Organization, leaving former Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the only remaining candidate for the job and setting up a key decision by WTO members to approve her appointment.

Yoo decided after discussions with the U.S. and other major nations, and took various issues into account including the need to revitalize the multilateral organization, according to a statement from Korea’s trade ministry on Friday.

“There was no consensus,” Yoo said. “So we needed enough time for in-depth consultations with important members, including the U.S.”

The withdrawal comes after dozens of former U.S. government officials urged President Joe Biden to endorse Okonjo-Iweala after the Trump administration blocked her selection in 2020, making the U.S. and Korea the only holdouts favoring Yoo. That opposition was enough to halt the selection process because WTO decisions are made on the basis of a consensus of its members.

By quitting the race, Yoo would appear to be clearing Okonjo-Iweala’s path to secure the leadership of the Geneva-based institution. But as the Biden administration forms its trade team, few clues have emerged publicly about whether it will lift U.S. opposition to Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy. The U.S. mission at WTO headquarters didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.
 

First Woman

The 66-year-old Nigerian economist, who is also a U.S. citizen, emerged as the front-runner for the WTO director-general post last year. If the U.S., Korea and the WTO’s other 162 members join a consensus to appoint Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO can announce a meeting to confirm her appointment within a matter of days.

If confirmed, Okonjo-Iweala would be the first woman and the first African to lead the organization in its 25-year history.

The WTO has been leaderless since September, when the organization’s former Director-General Roberto Azevedo stepped down a year before his term was set to expire. Since then the WTO has been overseen by four unelected deputy directors general.

The appointment of a new WTO director-general will help the organization confront an array of internal crises that have ground its work to a near halt.

The trade forum is largely dysfunctional and all three pillars of its work are under threat. The WTO has struggled to produce meaningful multilateral trade agreements, its trade monitoring function consistently underperforms and former President Donald Trump neutralized its appellate body in 2019, which effectively sidelined the organization’s role as the global arbiter of international commerce.

Though the power of the WTO leader is limited by the directives of its members, the director-general can convene meetings, and offer suggestions and strategies for addressing conflicts in the global trading system.

Okonjo-Iweala has pledged to take a more active role as director-general and to act as a sounding board to try to find common ground among the trade body’s disparate membership. 

By Sam Kim and Bryce Baschuk

Bloomberg

Related stories: Former Nigerian minister Okonjo-Iweala dragged into $2 billion scandal

Nigeria to push back on U.S. rejection of WTO candidate

Okonjo-Iweala is Africa's finance minister of the year

Fortune magazine lists Okonjo-Iweala in top 50 greatest world leaders 

Video - Nigeria spent $4.65 billion on food importation in 2020

 

Nigeria's government spent 4.65 billion dollars on food importation between January and September 2020. That's a 62 percent rise compared to the previous year. CGTN's Kelechi Emekalam reports that the increase in food costs was despite the West African nation imposing a land border closure aimed at boosting local production.

Video - Nigeria’s Traditional Textiles Threatened by Chinese Imports

Nigeria has been producing traditional, handmade, beautiful fabric designs for centuries. But preservers of the ancient art say modern manufacturing and cheap Chinese imports threaten this way of life.

Kano’s Kofar Mata dye pit is one of the last surviving hand-coloring textile makers in Nigeria.

Over the years, the workers at the pit have become fewer and fewer due to reduced patronage.

Mamood Abubakar bends over the one-meter deep dye pit in a continuous dipping process that produces rich indigo fabrics.

Abubakar has done this for the last 70 years to earn a living and sustain the tradition, but as he gets older, he worries about the future of the trade.

"This place has been around for more than 500 years," Abubakar said. "Arabs, Whites, and people from all over Africa come here because this business is not a small one. We expect that the youth should desire to be part of it so that when we are gone, they will replace us," he says.

Not far from the Kofar Mata Dye pit is the Kantin Kwari Textile Market, the largest in Nigeria.

Ismaila Abdullahi, a designer at the market, says cheap Chinese manufacturing means it doesn’t make good business sense to produce textiles locally.

"The progress we have made in this business is that we now have our own graphic designer, who draws the designs and sends them to China for them to produce the textiles and send back to us," he said.

Hamma Kwajaffa, the director general of the Nigerian Textile Manufacturers’ Association, blames the decline in locally made fabrics on Chinese imports, which he says are often smuggled into the country. 

“They take our designs and go to China and bring it to sell it cheaper. Five yards like this, they will sell it for 1,000 naira, while our factories cannot produce this product at less than 3,000 naira. Because these smugglers they have no workers, they don’t pay taxes, they don’t add any value, so they can afford in sell it cheaper,”   he said.

Nigeria’s Central Bank said last month that it has provided cotton producers with more than $300 million in loans in recent years to support the domestic textile industry, once Africa’s largest.  

In 2017, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, filling in for the president, ordered the government to give priority to products made in Nigeria when buying uniforms and footwear.

John Adaji, the president of the National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, says the policy needs to be expanded.

“South Africa had a policy on textile and it simply said, ‘Buy South African — wear South African.’ And they have a tax in force that enforces that. So, it is government. Government must be seen to provide an enabling ground for business,”  he said.

Craftsman Abubakar says the government should buy their handmade fabrics and export them to the world if they want these traditional Nigerian textiles survive. 

By Ifiok Ettang

VOA