Jadesimi: LADOL, Model for Economic Diversification

The Managing Director of the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistic Base (LADOL), Dr. Amy Jadesimi has said the company is a model for new economic diversification.

She revealed that the company spent the last three years perfecting this master plan and is now rolling it out.

Jadesimi, who stated this at the 19th edition of the International Economic Forum on Africa with the theme: “African Integration: Investing in our common future,” held in Madrid, Spain, said the company was now leveraging revenues from servicing the petroleum sector to complete the development of the remainder of the zone as a completely sustainable ecosystem and circular economy.

She added that this development highlights the importance of supporting real private sector indigenous companies, “because only indigenous companies will have the stamina, staying power and passion to build new businesses over ten to twenty years. 80 per cent of the 680 million new jobs the world needs will be created by SME’s and larger indigenous companies such as LADOL.

“This means it is imperative that development finance institutions (DFIs) and other investors in Africa directly fund private companies in Africa. To date, the vast majority of funds have gone through intermediaries, with most of the direct funding going to multinationals operating in Africa – this has to change if we want to build a sustainable world and maximise returns to investors.”

“LADOL is the largest 100 per cent private, 100 per cent indigenous industrial special economic zone in Nigeria. Over the last 18 years the investors have attracted $500 million into the zone, transforming a disused swamp into a world class integrated logistics base and the largest fabrication and integration Yard in West Africa, with the highest lifting capacity in Africa. At LADOL we focus on tackling high value activities, taking on projects that have never been done in Nigeria before – this opens up the market and has a multiplier effect on job creation of between five to 10, i.e. for every one job created in LADOL, five to 10 are created outside LADOL,” she added.

She was joined on the panel by, Arkebe Oqubay (Senior Minister and Special Adviser to the Ethiopian

Prime Minister, Ethiopia), Jong-Dae Park (Ambassador of the Republic of Korea in the Republic of South Africa), Felix Fernández-Shaw (Director Development and International Co-operation, EU) and the moderator was María Teresa Fernández De La Vega (Chair, Women’s foundation for Africa).

The dialogues throughout the day were built on the findings of the Africa’s Development Dynamics 2019: Achieving Productive Transformation report, which is the first economic report produced by the African Union Commission, in collaboration with the Development Centre.