SSENIF 2019 Summary Report

Date: 25th October 2019

Venue: Borchland, Borchlandweg 6-10, 1114 BD Amsterdam

Introduction
The 2nd South-South South-East Nigeria Investment Forum 2019 hosted by
Igbo General Assembly (IGA) The Netherlands in partnership with European
Igbo Community (EIC), was successfully held at Borchland, Borchlandweg 6-
10, 1114 BD Amsterdam, The Netherlands on 25th October 2019.
The South-South & South- Eastern Nigerian Investment Forum (SSENIF) was
designed to improve the business and economic development in South-South
& South- Eastern part of Nigeria by providing a platform for effective
investment dialogue (match-making) between the business community and
Government in the South-South & South- Eastern Nigeria and potential
foreign investors. The objectives of the summit include:
• The promotion of reliable partnerships in profitable businesses and
investment opportunities as an effective tool for economic growth and
development in Nigeria.
• To showcase investment and business potentials especially within the
South-southern and South-eastern Nigeria.
• To promote partnership between existing Diaspora entrepreneurs and
both Nigerian business community/foreign businesses and investors.

The SSENIF 2019 Event

The event started with arrival and registration of about 90 guests and
participants that were in attendance. Guests came from the US, Belgium,
Finland, Germany, France etc. Actual programme started at about 11.30 with
introduction of our able master of ceremony/ event anchors – Mr. Ike
McDonald Azuatalam and Mrs. Anita Hogan.

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 1. Minister Kabiru Musa, who represented his Excellency Oji Ngofa
(Nigerian Ambassador, The Netherlands), officially opened the event on
behalf of the Ambassador. In his address Minister Kabiru Musa,
acknowledged the critical importance of events such as the SSENIF initiative
in the effort to attract foreign investments into Nigeria and congratulated the
organisers of SSENIF 2019 for the effort. He raised issues of trust and
confidence in investing in Nigeria. The challenges of weak institutions,
corruption and terrorism that needs to be addressed to enable foreign
investments and the efforts being made by the Nigerian government to create
a more enabling foreign investment climate in Nigeria.

2. Afterwards, Dr. Nwachukwu Anakwenze (Ono-owu Abagana), the

guest Father of the Day expounded on the possibilities and opportunities of
investing in Nigeria especially in the South-south and South-east regions of
the country. However, he stressed that Nigeria can be amongst the greatest
countries of the world on if it can address its good governance and leadership
problems through re-structuring of the current Nigerian State to achieve true
federation.

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 3. After Dr. Nwachukwu Anakwenze’s address Dr. Okey Ndubueze on
behalf of Igbo General Assembly (IGA), The Netherlands and Chief Oliver
Nwankwor on behalf of European Igbo Community (EIC) welcomed invited
guests and participants to the event in their respective brief speeches, which
emphasised their hopes and belief that efforts such as the SSENIF initiative
are critical to advance employment and economic development in SSE region
and by extension to the rest of country.

4. The Keynote Speech was delivered by Dr. Collins Nweke. His

eloquent speech and presentation was titled “Blended Finance Options for
Region-to-Region Markets in Food, Beverages & Pharmaceutical
Commodities: Unexplored Opportunities for West Flanders & South-South
South-East Nigeria Regions.” His lecture emphasised the future of non-oil
economy and the overwhelming need for Nigeria to be ready for that
economy. Agriculture is the new gold and agri-business provides an
enormous investment opportunity for Nigeria. His presentation elaborates on
how we can take advantage of blended finance infrastructure within the
European Union agri-business investment framework.

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 5. After the keynote address, Engr. M.A.M. Pohlmann presented Zero
Wind Turbine that offers a viable alternative power generation option for
places with poor and unreliable power supply. The Zero wine Turbine is a
flow-optimized diffuser turbine with fowler technology that can be combined
with other alternative technologies for power generation, as well as storing the
generated energy in the latest battery technology. It offers a unique and
appealing way to independently generate energy, while showing the good
example of using sustainable energy, which is attractive to such places as the
SSE regions of Nigeria.

6. The first session came to an end with the presentations of Barr. Alex
Ezemanka on “Pertinent Legal issues in doing Business in Nigeria” where he
discussed the various legal framework, requirements, and guidelines for
corporate and foreign direct investments in Nigeria. Afterwards, Mrs Patience
Mayaki-van der Horst made a powerful case for - Energy Security in Africa,
emphasising the need to seek broader afro-centric coalitions in providing
solutions to our major developmental problems.

7. Thereafter, there was a lunch break that lasted for about an hour.
Invited guests were offered lunch by the organising committee at he event
venue restaurant while the rest of participant catered for their own lunch from
the restaurant as was planned.

8. The second session started with a presentation of Mr Dick van Gelder

– CEO, Createfree Organisation on “African Renaissance’’ and giving and
update on locating the Global Headquarters of Music and Dance in Enugu,
Nigeria. His presentation was focussed on elaborating the Creafree
Standard, which is a new intellectual property (IP) standard that offers a
lifetime protection and a 70 years post-mortem protection on your intellectual
property at the cost of only €50.00. He argued that since most wealth is
possessed through intellectual property, the new IP standard offers the
peoples of developing countries especially Africa a simple and affordable
alternative towards getting into the wealth creation through IP investments.

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 9. Mr Mackenzi Mazakie of the Netherlands African Business Council
(NABC) – an Africa-focused network for trade and investment facilitation in
the Netherlands shared the their experiences in promoting African/Dutch
business investment relations. He gave a blueprint example of their on going
“Seeds for Change” project in Kano State, Nigeria, which is aimed to build a
thriving vegetables sector in Nigeria that is driven by use of good quality
hybrid seeds. The project specifically focuses on tomato, onion, cabbage,
watermelon and pepper. It is a blueprint that could be borrowed to attract
agribusiness investment in the SSE region of Nigeria.

10. Tanja Malti Jadnanansing – Chairperson, Amsterdam South,

addressed the conference. She welcomed attending guests and participants
and congratulated IGA for organising SSENIF 2019. She observed that the
Nigeria community is not “represented” within Southeast Amsterdam city
government and strongly appeal to the Nigerian community to get more
involved and to start playing a more significant role in contributing to the
politics and governance of Southeast Amsterdam. She promised that her

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 doors are open to the community and looks forward to developing a closer
relationship.

11. Afterwards, Dr. Ugo Nwogu delivered a stimulating presentation on

“Manufacturing - Metal Casting as an investment Opportunity in SSE Nigeria.”
He viewed metal casting as a base industrial necessity on which to build up
manufacturing and production in Nigeria especially in the SSE regions of the
country.

12. In his presentation on “Recycling of Used Oil in Africa” Ben Hoejenbos

discussed the enormous potentials of used oil recycling in his paper “ Find
your way through the jungle of investing in west-Africa.” He shared his first
hand experience as a Dutch investor in a West African State of Togo in the
area of waste management and recycling. He attested to the huge
investment potential that Nigeria holds for such a sector and look forward to
perhaps expending present operations to Nigeria. He also offered critical
points of advise to potential foreign investors on how to successfully navigate
the challenges of investing similar sub-Sahara African countries.

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 13. There was also the very inspiring presentation of Freddy Austli from the
International Organization for Migration (IOM) on “Diaspora Engagement and
Brain Circulation.” He informed of the conference about new 3-year IOM
project – Connecting Diaspora for Development 2 (CD4D2) is a project that
links up the resources of the Diaspora to the needs of countries of origin
through knowledge transfer and/or entrepreneurship. Interestingly the current
project includes 4 focus countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia. It is
scheduled to run from July 2019- June 2022. He urged members of the
Nigerian community to actively participate.

14. Other presentations include that of Dr. Isi Inyang – Director, South-
South South-East Nigeria Investment Limited, United Kingdom (SSENIL, UK)
on the efforts of the company owned by members of the Diaspora community
in UK and Europe to attract and shepherd Foreign Business investments and
Implementation South-south and South-east Nigeria. Engr. Cornelus Obot,
who represented the NIDO – Europe Chairman, Mr. Kenneth Gbandi also
gave a speech on the need to continued collaboration and building of synergy
amongst the diverse Diaspora communities and organisations in working
together to achieve a common purpose. To this end he commended IGA on
their outreach to other Diaspora organisations and communities in hosting of
the SSENIF 2019 event.

15. At about 5.30 pm, The Chairman of SSENIF 2019 organising

committee gave a very warm vote of thanks to invited guests and participants
for a successful event, which brought the session to and eventful end followed
by group photograph. The dynamic duo of our event anchors - Mr. Ike
McDonald Azuatalam and Mrs. Anita Hogan contributed greatly to the
success of the summit with the way they masterfully controlled and managed
the time pressure during the event.

16. The remaining period was spent in networking amongst invited guests
and participants. At about 6.30 pm, guests were taken to a well-known
Nigerian Restaurant in Amsterdam South to avail them a taste of Nigerian
cuisine and hospitality.

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 Observation and Feedback

17. Feedbacks received from our invited guests and participants were
generally very positive. The event organisers were heartily commended for
work well done in organising a successful SSENIF 2019 event. Feedbacks
were received from interviews after the event and written feedbacks via
emails from guests.

18. The organising event organising committee observed that the event
started later than intended due to late arrival of key guests, which exerted a
lot of unintended time pressure on the event programme and schedule.

19. The major important feedback from the organising committee was our
inability to secure corporate funding for the event largely due to time
constraint. We propose that organising future SSENIF should start early
enough, which should be ideally more than a year in advance given that most
corporate entities plan and make possible project finance decisions towards
the end of the financial year prior to current financial year.

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 This will require that hosting such event should be announced to hosts 2
years in advance to enable adequate preparations. It is our hope that
successive SSENIF events will get bigger and more successful in future.

20. The SSENIF 2019 organising committee wish to thank IGA

coordinators and IGA general body for the support given to the committee, to
organise a successful SSENIF 2019 event. We look forward that there will be
successful follow-up and follow-through to agreement, commitments and
promised made during the SSENIF event in order to ensure substantial gains
towards achieving the overall goals of the SSENIF initiative.

Dr. Okey Ndubueze

(On behalf of the SSENIF 2019 Committee)

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