Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Video - Nigeria bans foreign milk to support local farmers
In Nigeria, the government has banned the sale of foreign milk to support struggling local farmers. But the move could backfire, with concerns it will lead to dairy shortages and price increases.
Video - New comedy show on American TV 'Bob Hearts Abishola' highlights Nigerian culture
Immigrants and Coloradans with Nigerian heritage are excited for the new CBS comedy ‘Bob Hearts Abishola.’ The show premiers Monday night and will highlight Nigerian culture and community to a national American audience.
“This is going to break away stereotypes, any point of views people may have had about the African family,” Jessica Compaore said. “This is going to show you what the African family is really like.”
A Colorado native, Compaore’s grandfather came to the U.S. from Nigeria. She learned later in life about her heritage to the African nation but has helped to showcase it in the Denver Metro Area since then. The new comedy has caught the attention of this community in Colorado. It tells the story of a businessman in Detroit falling for a nurse he encounters at a hospital, who is an immigrant from Nigeria.
“It’s about promoting where I am from, who I am, I am embrace where I am from,” Samuel Ogah said. “It’s a big deal, it’s showing our culture and greatness.”
Ogah is the CEO of Best Music Entertainment promoting events in Colorado not only for his Nigerian community but other African groups living in the state. He said the thousands of Nigerians who have come to the state are eager to be a part of the economy and build a family here.
“They’re all working toward how we can create a better Colorado,” he said. “We’re proud of where we come from and you can get to know more about us.”
Billy Gardell plays “Bob” and Folake Olowofoyeku stars as “Abishola” on the show. Both actors spoke to CBS4 ahead of the premiere and the significance of having a series on primetime television not only about immigrants but a family from Africa.
“It feels like a full circle moment and I’m glad I had the opportunity,” Olowofoyeku said.
Ogah said it will be a meaningful example of representation not just for those connected to one country but instead a way to unite those from all over one continent.
“That story really relates to all immigrants, not just Nigerians,” he said. “I think it’s going to give more Africans to be able to relate.”
He hopes his events throughout the year, including one for the celebration of Nigeria’s independence, can have a similar impact by inviting others to learn about their community. He works to create opportunities online and in person for various African immigrants to come together and connect. Not only social gatherings and a chance to celebrate their heritage but also to introduce their businesses and network.
“You can only know about me and my culture when you relate and talk to me,” he said.
Colorado has become home to many in the Nigerian community because of the comfortable weather and the opportunity for growth. Families keep moving here because they find a place for them to live a better life. Since 2013, they have come together for Nigerian Day, which will take place this year in Lowry Park on Saturday, Oct. 5 in Aurora.
“They have this energy, they have this richness, they have this this brightness to see what it means to be successful within themselves,” Compaore said. “They are folks just like you and me.”
By Shawn Chitnis
CBS
Monday, September 23, 2019
Video - Too late to replant damaged crops caused by flood in Nigeria
Food supplies are threatened in northwest Nigeria where floods have destroyed crops. Dozens of people have been killed recently and thousands of homes washed away. Al Jazeera's Ahmed Idris reports from Auyo in Jigawa state, where the local government is struggling to help.
Nigeria runs on generators and nine hours of power a day
Kabir Sabo’s sewing machine hums busily as he hems a “babariga,” a popular dress in northern Nigeria, in his small corner shop on the outskirts of Abuja. It can hardly be heard over the sound of Nigeria’s worst problem.
Sabo’s noisy electricity generator costs him an average of 3,000 naira ($8.30) a day in fuel, he says. That’s the bulk of the roughly 4,000 naira he makes daily.
“When you are a small business owner in a country where there is no power, it really is depressing,” he said. “I have on multiple occasions shut down to take up a monthly paying job. It’s difficult to run the business when most of your earnings go on paying bills, buying fuel and all sorts of things.”
In Africa’s most populous country, almost everyone depends on generators, including President Muhammadu Buhari. His office will spend 46 million naira fueling generators this year. In the country’s 2019 budget, there are 1,358 generator-related expenses.
The shortage of power is one of the biggest issues Buhari faces as he tries to reform a $400 billion economy that is too dependent on oil exports, has too many inefficient state-owned enterprises and is still struggling to recover from a slump in 2016.
“Lack of access to electricity and unreliable electricity supply are key constraints to doing business in Nigeria,” the International Monetary Fund said in its latest economic report on the country. It estimated the annual economic loss at about $29 billion. In a 2014 World Bank survey, 27% of Nigerian firms identified electricity as the main obstacle to doing business.
Households with access to on-grid electricity had an average power supply of only 9.2 hours a day in the first half of 2019, according to a survey by the country’s leading polling agency, NOI Polls. Electricity production per capita is less than 15% of the average of emerging-market economies and less than 25% of the sub-Saharan Africa average, according to the IMF.
To keep out the darkness, households own and operate an estimated 22 million small gasoline generators, whose combined generating capacity is eight times higher than on-grid supply, according to a June 2019 presentation by Dalberg, a global policy and advisory firm. Businesses and individuals spend about $12 billion a year, twice the country’s annual infrastructure budget, fueling these generators.
Nigeria, which also has the continent’s largest gas reserves and ranks ninth globally, consumed an average 3,713 megawatts of electricity from the grid in 2018, data published by the country’s central bank shows. That’s about a 10th of what Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. made available in South Africa, a country with less than a third of the population and which itself is subject to rolling blackouts.
Nigeria is only able to send about a quarter of its total power capacity to homes and businesses due to a poor and dilapidated power infrastructure, much of it installed in the 1980s. The country’s transmission lines can “theoretically” carry about 7,500 megawatts, according to the country’s electricity regulatory authority.
The irony is that Nigeria took the right steps in 2013 by disbanding its state-owned power company and breaking it into three different businesses; generation, transmission and distribution. The state sold the generation and distribution arms to 23 different owners and held on to the transmission lines.
This is similar to the solution now being proposed for Eskom. But Nigeria also shows how not to reform the power industry.
The government retained the right to determine tariffs through a regulatory agency, which raised power prices in 2015 -- and quickly reversed it as elections approached. Since then electricity tariffs have remained largely unchanged even as inflation has remained above the central bank’s upper target of 9% since 2015 and the naira is 50% weaker against the dollar.
Tariffs should go up by a minimum of 50%, according to the IMF, but maintaining prices at current levels has become a fiscal burden. Since 2015, the government has provided three bailouts via the central bank for the electricity sector, amounting to 1.5 trillion naira to plug revenue shortfalls.
It doesn’t help that power customers are often unwilling to pay for the electricity they consume. Distribution companies collected payments for only 64.1% of electricity supplied in the first three months of 2019, according to a report by Nigeria’s power regulatory agency. The distribution firms in turn paid for only 28% of power they received from generation companies and the transmission network.
Buhari’s 2017 recovery plan for the industry hasn’t made much progress, and now the government is proposing a staggered tariff increase from January. The proposal will rates by an average 27% for some users.
Increasing tariffs could lead to new investments, said Cheta Nwanze, an analyst at Lagos-based business advisory service SBM Intelligence.
“The problem is, transmission will still be in the hands of the government, which is inefficient and unable to make the required investment,” Nwanze said.
In Sabo’s small shop, he frequently deals with impatient customers whose clothing orders have been delayed because of long blackouts.
“I am willing to pay more if it means I will not have to rely on the generator to run my business,” he said. “Should I have that choice, I’d pay maybe two naira more.”
By Anthony Osae-Brown, Ruth Olurounbi, and Gordon Bell
Bloomberg
Related story: Stable electricity supply foreseeable in Nigeria's future
Sabo’s noisy electricity generator costs him an average of 3,000 naira ($8.30) a day in fuel, he says. That’s the bulk of the roughly 4,000 naira he makes daily.
“When you are a small business owner in a country where there is no power, it really is depressing,” he said. “I have on multiple occasions shut down to take up a monthly paying job. It’s difficult to run the business when most of your earnings go on paying bills, buying fuel and all sorts of things.”
In Africa’s most populous country, almost everyone depends on generators, including President Muhammadu Buhari. His office will spend 46 million naira fueling generators this year. In the country’s 2019 budget, there are 1,358 generator-related expenses.
The shortage of power is one of the biggest issues Buhari faces as he tries to reform a $400 billion economy that is too dependent on oil exports, has too many inefficient state-owned enterprises and is still struggling to recover from a slump in 2016.
“Lack of access to electricity and unreliable electricity supply are key constraints to doing business in Nigeria,” the International Monetary Fund said in its latest economic report on the country. It estimated the annual economic loss at about $29 billion. In a 2014 World Bank survey, 27% of Nigerian firms identified electricity as the main obstacle to doing business.
Households with access to on-grid electricity had an average power supply of only 9.2 hours a day in the first half of 2019, according to a survey by the country’s leading polling agency, NOI Polls. Electricity production per capita is less than 15% of the average of emerging-market economies and less than 25% of the sub-Saharan Africa average, according to the IMF.
To keep out the darkness, households own and operate an estimated 22 million small gasoline generators, whose combined generating capacity is eight times higher than on-grid supply, according to a June 2019 presentation by Dalberg, a global policy and advisory firm. Businesses and individuals spend about $12 billion a year, twice the country’s annual infrastructure budget, fueling these generators.
Nigeria, which also has the continent’s largest gas reserves and ranks ninth globally, consumed an average 3,713 megawatts of electricity from the grid in 2018, data published by the country’s central bank shows. That’s about a 10th of what Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. made available in South Africa, a country with less than a third of the population and which itself is subject to rolling blackouts.
Nigeria is only able to send about a quarter of its total power capacity to homes and businesses due to a poor and dilapidated power infrastructure, much of it installed in the 1980s. The country’s transmission lines can “theoretically” carry about 7,500 megawatts, according to the country’s electricity regulatory authority.
The irony is that Nigeria took the right steps in 2013 by disbanding its state-owned power company and breaking it into three different businesses; generation, transmission and distribution. The state sold the generation and distribution arms to 23 different owners and held on to the transmission lines.
This is similar to the solution now being proposed for Eskom. But Nigeria also shows how not to reform the power industry.
The government retained the right to determine tariffs through a regulatory agency, which raised power prices in 2015 -- and quickly reversed it as elections approached. Since then electricity tariffs have remained largely unchanged even as inflation has remained above the central bank’s upper target of 9% since 2015 and the naira is 50% weaker against the dollar.
Tariffs should go up by a minimum of 50%, according to the IMF, but maintaining prices at current levels has become a fiscal burden. Since 2015, the government has provided three bailouts via the central bank for the electricity sector, amounting to 1.5 trillion naira to plug revenue shortfalls.
It doesn’t help that power customers are often unwilling to pay for the electricity they consume. Distribution companies collected payments for only 64.1% of electricity supplied in the first three months of 2019, according to a report by Nigeria’s power regulatory agency. The distribution firms in turn paid for only 28% of power they received from generation companies and the transmission network.
Buhari’s 2017 recovery plan for the industry hasn’t made much progress, and now the government is proposing a staggered tariff increase from January. The proposal will rates by an average 27% for some users.
Increasing tariffs could lead to new investments, said Cheta Nwanze, an analyst at Lagos-based business advisory service SBM Intelligence.
“The problem is, transmission will still be in the hands of the government, which is inefficient and unable to make the required investment,” Nwanze said.
In Sabo’s small shop, he frequently deals with impatient customers whose clothing orders have been delayed because of long blackouts.
“I am willing to pay more if it means I will not have to rely on the generator to run my business,” he said. “Should I have that choice, I’d pay maybe two naira more.”
By Anthony Osae-Brown, Ruth Olurounbi, and Gordon Bell
Bloomberg
Related story: Stable electricity supply foreseeable in Nigeria's future
Friday, September 20, 2019
Video - Nigerian girl using art of the spoken word to preach peace
A Nigerian girl is using the art of spoken word to preach peace and prosperity. She says she's on a mission to encourage her fellow citizens to join hands in building a better country despite the numerous challenges facing Africa's most populous nation.
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