JOBS: A 'MARSHALL PLAN' FOR AFRICA BY TONY ELUMELU

To Africa’s many challenges, add one more: unemployment. Unemployment, independent of any other factor, threatens to derail the economic promise that Africa deserves. It’s a time bomb with no geographical boundaries: Economists expect Africa to create 54 million new jobs by 2020 but 122 million Africans will enter the labour force during that time frame. Adding to this shortfall are tens of millions currently unemployed or underemployed, making the human and economic consequences nearly too large to imagine.

Thus, even with the strong economic growth we have seen over the past decade, job creation in Africa remains much too slow.
Africa needs a comprehensive, coordinated approach akin to America’s “Marshall Plan” in Europe after World War Two. That effort focused on building infrastructure, modernising the business sector, and improving trade. By the end of the four-year programme, Europe surpassed its pre-war economic output.

I’VE INVESTED $2.5BN IN NIGERIAN ELECTRICITY – ELUMELU

Notable entrepreneur, Mr. Tony Elumelu, revealed yesterday that he has invested about $2.5 billion on electricity in Nigeria, with a view to creating enabling environment for foreign investments.
Elumelu, who was speaking at a Powering Africa’s Progress organized by Centre for Strategic Studies and Investment Studies (CSIC) in Washington DC, U.S.A, said all hands must be on deck to have stable electricity in Nigeria.

NIGERIA’S ELUMELU SEEKING 2 OIL BLOCKS FOR POWER PLANTS

LAGOS – Nigerian businessman Tony Elumelu is negotiating with several oil majors to buy two onshore oil and gas assets he will use to fire power plants that are part of his $2.5 billion investment pledge to U.S. President Barack Obama’s Africa Power initiative.
“I just came back from Europe yesterday and we are talking very seriously with all of the oil majors to buy two big oil fields,” Elumelu said in an interview at his office in Lagos.
Several oil majors, including Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Petrobras and ConocoPhillips are expected to this year divest multiple assets onshore or in the shallow waters of the Niger Delta, continuing a trend that started two years ago.

PREPARE TO PAY MORE FOR ELECTRICITY - FG TELLS NIGERIANS •AS FG, PHCN SUCCESSOR INVESTORS SIGN HANDOVER AGREEMENTS

ACTING Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Mr Benjamin Ezra Dikki, has advised electricity consumers in Nigeria to be prepared for increased electricity tariff.

This is just as the Managing Director of CMEC, one of the preferred bidders in the privatisation exercise of unbundled Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) successor companies, Mrs Heather Onoh, said it would take the company six months to rehabilitate parts of the Sapele power plant.