IBRAHIM: NIGERIA NEEDS TO BORROW MORE FOR INFRASTRUCTURE

need to look at specific environment before giving their recommendations, instead of giving recommendations that are at variance with the environment?

That was part of the thing I told them at the meeting I attended. I told them to stop saying Africa’s debt is high, because Africa has not even taken enough debts. For instance, the world spends $9 trillion on major projects every year, but the whole of Africa spends just one per cent of that amount. Africa is one of the seven continents in the world, with 2.1 billion population and $4 trillion economy, with a likelihood of rising to $10 trillion by 2020, which is two years from now.So, you cannot tell me that the world is spending $9 trillion on infrastructure and Africa is doing just one per cent of that and you tell me there is debt.

Is it that they don’t understand these issues you have highlighted?

It depends on knowledge and it is an agenda we must present to the world. Like I suggested at the session I attended, we need to have an infrastructure or project day at next year’s IMF meetings where we can talk about Africa’s infrastructure.I don’t want to hear about Africa’s debt. If you spend $9 trillion a year on infrastructure globally and Africa is spending just one per cent of that amount, then what debt are we talking about? So, what Africa doesn’t understand is how to access funds. There is money in the world. The president of China recently said that $27 trillion is sitting somewhere in China which they don’t know where to invest it. About $18 trillion had already been invested in a lower yield bond, yet the US doesn’t want China to go to Africa, warning Africa to beware of China. The key thing is that bilateral relationship needs to be developed across the World and not across specific interest.

So, what is your take on the trade tension?

Well, there is nothing anybody can do. I love the US, but I think Donald Trump is going through a wrong route because whether you like it or not, the Android telephone on your hands is being produced in China, Google went to China in 2006 and left the country in 2010. What happened? The investment collapsed because China locked up the airspace. It took a lot of political manoeuvring from Obama to take Google back to China. In China,

they reform the telephone every week. Ali Baba, a company in China is doing $20 billion sales a day. What is Nigeria’s total externaldebt? $20billion. In fact, the government had to use Ali Baba’s cashflow to grant microfinance loans to the low income, through a partnership. But in Africa, the governments don’t want to collaborate with the entrepreneurs, which is very wrong. In the US, Apple by Steve Jobs at a time almost had an equivalent of the card that the US government uses. So, government needs work more with its entrepreneurs. African governments are still a bit silly about how they treat their entrepreneurs.

They think they have this above the board control on everybody’s life, which is not possible. Governments must come on its knees to beg. Government is a servant and can’t be Lord over people and think that they are just going to invest in your country. If you choose to lead, you choose to serve. That is because in between leadership and realising your objective as a leader, you must be a servant. So, the trade war is not one that the US can win. But I think President Trump is just using a strategy, he doesn’t really mean what he is saying. He is trying to prepare for the next election. So, he is saying what an average American wants to hear. So, he will be in a meeting with you, sign a nice agreement with you and go on the television to say a different thing that was not even discussed in the meeting. So, it is a strategy. When he came in, he won the election because he told Americans that he would give the country back to them.

We learnt that you are planning to organise a conference in Dubai this year, can you give us an insight into the proposed conference?

We are going to have the Infrastructural Development for Africa conference. We are concerned about the fact that the global spending is $9 trillion, and Africa’s share is one per cent. My office in Dubai is the platform that links users of funds to providers of funds. So, if a country needs money to develop roads, infrastructure and electricity, they contact us. We also have banks and other international organisations that finance specific projects. We link them together at a fee. We are going to invite the World Bank and IMF to that conference because we want to open African governments to where they can get funding from all over the world. The conference holds in August and we have gotten the approval of the Dubai government.