Emerging African economies are increasingly embracing Information Technology (IT) service solutions in a bid to support their growth initiatives.
That’s according to the latest insights released by International Data Corporation (IDC), with the global advisory services firm also explaining that growing public and private sector IT spending, together with maturing and increasingly competitive business environments, are also driving IT services demand.
The United States decreased its oil import from Nigeria by 67 per cent in 2014, signaling growing economic pain and sustained
pressure on foreign reserves, already down to $29.3 billion as at April 15, 2015, its lowest point since 2010.
Figures from the US Department of Commerce suggest that U.S. total trade in 2014 (exports plus imports) with sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) also went down by 18 per cent to $52.1 billion compared to 2013.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the World Bank Group, says it has mobilised and invested over $2 billion to support more than 1, 5000 megawatts of new generation capacity in Africa in the past two years.
It says Africa needs to increase its power generation capacity by 7, 000 megawatts each year to meet rising demand for electricity in a continent where most people live without electricity lamenting that such gap hinders economic growth and deters much-needed foreign investment. It says that expanding the supply of energy has become an imperative that cannot be delayed in Africa.
Since 2004 to date, the banking sector and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have welcomed three different Governors of three different governing styles. In essence, Chukwuma Soludo, Lamido Sanusi and Godwin Emefiele represent three dimensional regimes in one critical sector-Banking.
For those that lived through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) regimes of Professor Chukwuma Soludo and Mallam Lamido Sanusi, it was always a difficult act to objectively locate the successes and failures of both administrations in terms of curing the banking sector of its endless Ebola diseases and building strong bricks for sustainable future growth.
Despite falling oil prices and post-election uncertainties,the Nigerian insurance sector is looking into the future with broad optimism and confidence. Mr. Fola Daniel, Commissioner for Insurance, National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) says the industry is undergoing rapid transformation, thus requiring the strategic support of operators and other relevant stakeholders to enable the industry occupy its rightful position in the forefront of the financial services sector in Nigeria.
This is the story of a national titan, who offered service to the nation for over 40 years. In these years, in keeping with the social responsibility philosophy of its establishment, “WT” (Whisky Tango), as it was fondly recognised in the global aviation circle, flew daily sorties in addition to scheduled operations to advance the aspirations of a new nation.
Between 1960 – 1975, Nigeria Airways announced, publicised and projected the image of a new independent black African nation. From Europe to America, from Africa to Middle/Near East, the Nigerian flag flew on WT. It not only brought pride to the nation and its people, but also raised their profile globally at a time when very few nations of the world were in the global air space.
The emerging APC administration is seriously considering mass re-engineering of the federal system, especially Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to ensure the success of its policies and programmes when the party takes office at the federal level on May 29, 2015.
A senior APC chieftain confided in Business Journal in Abuja that considering that most of the heads of the MDAs were brought into office by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or were clandestine card carrying members of the PDP, which had been in power since 1999, the success of APC policies may not be guaranteed under them.
The banking entity was officially proclaimed DEAD by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2009. It was a mysterious and painful demise. But the soul of the bank has refused to Rest-in-Peace. Today, the living dead skeleton of the bank are rumbling in the belly of Access Bank Plc, fueling ghostly imaginations of resurrection or reincarnation.
Against the intense apprehension by local and international observers, Nigeria’s 2015 Presidential Elections turned out peaceful and successful following the incumbent’s concession of defeat prior to the final announcement by the electoral umpire – INEC.
The election, which was keenly contested by All Progressives Congress (APC) – General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) saw the emergence of GMB as the President-elect of Nigeria.
The presidential election was over on Saturday, March 28, 2015. It is now a historical document for academic research and street political analysis.
On March 28, CHANGE triumphed over TRANSFORMATION AGENDA, leading to the emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari as President-Elect, Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Professor Akpan Ekpo, Director-General, West African Institute For Financial And Economic Management (WAIFEM) has drawn a 6-Point Economic Plan for the in-coming Buhari Administration sustainable economic renaissance on the back of regime support for the private sector as growth engine of the economy.
The 6-Point Plan is anchored on Reduction of Unemployment, Infrastructure, Human Capital, Diversification, Utilisation of Foreign Reserves and Poverty Reduction.
Today is an indelible Day of History for Business Journal.
It marks the effective and successful transformation of Business Journal from a monthly business magazine to a weekly business/ financial newspaper.
Indeed, we have come a long way from birth in May 2008 as a monthly magazine to what we are today as a weekly newspaper. It has been a divine journey anchored on Professionalism, Enterprise, and Freedom. It is also driven by our resilience and dogged commitment to achieving our overarching dream of advancing the cause of business/financial journalism in Nigeria.
Citing rising level of non-performing loans at 15.7 per cent and commercial banks’ borrowing from their central banks at nine per cent of liabilities in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has strongly advocated increase in banks’ capital adequacy requirements to maintain sound financial stability for regional economic growth.
The World Bank Group announced an additional $100 million funding in its Ebola crisis response to speed up deployment of foreign health workers to the three worst-affected countries in West Africa. The announcement increases the World Bank Group’s funding for the Ebola fight over the last three months in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to more than $500 million.
In recent weeks, West African and global development leaders have appealed for a massive coordinated reinforcement of international health teams to the three countries in order to contain the epidemic. The health workers are needed to treat and care for patients, boost local health capacity, manage Ebola treatment centers, and resume essential health services for non-Ebola conditions.
Current estimates by the United Nations indicate that about 5,000 international medical, training and support personnel are needed in the three countries over the coming months to respond to the Ebola outbreak, including 700-1,000 foreign health workers to treat patients in the Ebola treatment centers.
“The world’s response to the Ebola crisis has increased significantly in recent weeks, but we still have a huge gap in getting enough trained health workers to the areas with the highest infection rates,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “We must urgently find ways to break any barriers to the deployment of more health workers. It is our hope that this $100 million can help be a catalyst for a rapid surge of health workers to the communities in dire need.”
The World Bank Group’s additional financing will help set up a coordination hub in close cooperation with the three countries; the World Health Organisation (WHO); the United Nations’ main Ebola coordination body in Ghana; and other agencies to recruit, train and deploy qualified foreign health workers.
The hub will be designed and operated in coordination with the Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Ebola and the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), with technical support from the WHO and in close collaboration with other partners.
It will resolve key issues blocking the recruitment of significantly more foreign health workers, such as pay and benefits, recruitment and training, safety, transportation, housing, provision of urgent medical care, and/or medical evacuations for any infected staff.
The funding also will strengthen the overall capacity of the three countries toward reaching the 70/70/60 targets established by UNMEER and WHO on October 1, 2014: To isolate and treat 70 percent of suspected Ebola cases in West Africa and safely bury 70 percent of the dead within the next 60 days.
The announcement comes at a time of increased international focus on the need to bring more trained health workers to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
At a special meeting on Ebola called on October 28, 2014, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, African Union Commission Chairperson, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said her organisation would help deploy 2,000 trained health workers from African countries to the affected nations.
At the meeting, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank Group President Kim welcomed the pledge and said they would do all they could to help. Also Tuesday, Kenyan health leaders told Kim that 600 health workers in the country have volunteered to go to work in the affected nations.
And earlier this month, Paul Allen, the Co-founder of Microsoft, pledged $100 million to increase the number of foreign health workers, with much of the funding going toward medical evacuation services for foreign health workers if they were to contract Ebola.
The European Commission and the United States earlier this month also pledged to support medical evacuation of infected foreign health workers.
“Health workers take an oath to treat the sick – and so it’s no surprise to me that many health workers want to go treat Ebola patients at the source of this epidemic,” said Kim, an infectious disease doctor who spent years treating patients in poor countries. “So we need to find all ways possible to remove any obstacle that stops health workers from serving – whether it is pay for workers in developing countries, or the promise of evacuation services. Health workers who treat Ebola patients are heroes, and we should treat them as such.”
Kim also said that the hub could jumpstart the development of a more permanent global health security reserve corps from different countries for rapid and targeted health worker deployment in response to future health crises.
“Even as we focus intensely on the Ebola emergency response, we must also invest in public health infrastructure, institutions and systems to prepare for the next epidemic, which could spread much more quickly, kill even more people and potentially devastate the global economy,” said Kim.
The new funding will come from World Bank Group’s IDA Crisis Response Window, which is designed to help low-income IDA countries respond to exceptionally severe crises in a timely, transparent and predictable way.
Financing from the Crisis Response Window complements UN and other emergency relief efforts by providing immediate crisis response, supporting country efforts to provide care and essential support for affected populations, while helping countries return to a path of long-term development.
The World Bank Group previously announced that it was mobilizing $400 million for the three countries hardest hit by the Ebola crisis, of which $117 million has already been disbursed. This support—coordinated closely with the United Nations and other international and country partners—will assist the affected countries in treating the sick, providing essential food and water to Ebola-affected households, coping with the economic and social impact of the crisis, and starting to improve their public health systems to build up resilience and preparedness for potential future outbreaks.
The World Bank Group also recently released a report that said that if the virus continues to surge in the three worst-affected countries and spreads to neighboring countries, the two-year regional financial impact could reach $32.6 billion by the end of 2015.
The Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa has the potential to be the most deadly infectious disease event since the 1918 flu pandemic, according to a new report by catastrophic risk modeling firm RMS.
RMS said the current outbreak will continue to worsen while the deployment of resources is ramped up to meet the caseload.
According to RMS modeling, until a tipping point is reached where the number of new daily cases declines rather than increases, the severity of the outbreak will continue to multiply, with the total number of new cases approximately doubling each month.
RMS said it does not expect this outbreak of Ebola to become a significant mortality threat outside of West Africa.
“Controlling the spread of this Ebola outbreak is more a question of logistics than virology,” said Dominic Smith, Pandemic Risk Expert and Senior Manager of Life Risks at RMS. “The fight against the Ebola epidemic is a race against a moving target; more resources are required as the number of cases increases.”
RMS modeling suggests that, based on current response efforts, the tipping point will be reached in January 2015.
Modeling further reveals a 55 percent chance that by the end of November, at least 1,000 new cases of Ebola will develop daily, and as many as 1,400 per day in a worst-case scenario. There have been more than 9,000 cases reported in total to date.
Adding to the devastation of the Ebola outbreak, overwhelmed medical systems in West Africa have less resources to respond to other diseases and the mortality rate of malaria and yellow fever is on the rise, according to the report. Also, malaria deaths are likely to continue rising as the seasonal height of malaria transmission is reached next month.
RMS modeled the future paths of cases and deaths from the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, which were combined with a probabilistic assessment of various international medical and military response scenarios to estimate the timing of the tipping point where cases are controlled such that the disease tapers off.
If effective resources are deployed at a rate that outstrips the pace of increase in new cases, a tipping point can be reached where the number of new daily cases reaches a maximum, allowing response measures to kick in and prevent new infections at a rate that causes the epidemic to subside.
“The way to stop this outbreak is simple in principle and has been demonstrated in Nigeria and in specific cities in the affected region: reduce contacts with infected people by more than half,” said Smith. “The scale and pace of the international response will define how long it takes to reach the tipping point.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that, even in the absence of treatments and vaccines, the epidemic would be brought under control and eventually come to an end if approximately 70 to 75 percent of cases are in medical care or treatment units, or in environments where there is a reduced risk of disease transmission.
In a realistic scenario based on current response efforts, RMS analysis projects the tipping point will be reached at the end of January 2015, with the outbreak subsiding by June 2015.
When modeling a disease, RMS said it first looks at the reported virulence and the transmissibility of the pathogen responsible for causing Ebola. This virus is extremely deadly, with an estimated case fatality rate of 69 to 73 percent. RMS said this range of estimates for transmissibility is between 1.5 and 2.2, which means on average an infected individual will transmit the virus to approximately two other people in a susceptible population.
RMS then takes into account mitigating criteria, including medical and non-medical interventions. In its modeling, RMS evaluated the current response resources in place in impacted countries, further resources already pledged and a range of estimates of potential additional resources that will be deployed. For each country, RMS used these factors to formulate five scenarios, ranging from very optimistic to very pessimistic, and their associated probabilities.
According to the report, the number of beds for Ebola treatment currently in use is far below what is needed to reverse the outbreak in any of the three effected countries. To reach the tipping point sooner, faster ramp up of mitigating efforts is essential, but subsequently, fewer total beds and resources in general will be required.
For example, in order to reach the tipping point in Sierra Leone, the current number of beds in use needs to be approximately tripled by the end of November. If that fails, the number will need to increase to six times today’s number by the end of December to halt the outbreak.
A large degree of reliance will be placed on beds being rolled out in Ebola treatment centers (ETCs), which cost $5.7 million to set up and run a 50-bed center for one month. Ebola community care units (ECUs) staffed by rapidly trained non-experts rather than medical workers are being set up in some areas, but there is larger uncertainty surrounding their effectiveness.
Treatments might help reduce the case fatality rate, but are very unlikely to have a significant role in halting the spread of the Ebola epidemic. An Ebola vaccine might be available in time to shorten the epidemic, but will not be produced in sufficient quantities to have an active role in halting the spread of the epidemic in the next few months.
RMS said it does not expect this outbreak of Ebola to become a significant mortality threat in other parts of the world. It is possible that it could spread to neighboring countries in West Africa.
This risk can be reduced by appropriate screening of people leaving the impacted region and could be contained with rapid implementation of effective control measures.
In the situation where there are potentially 10,000 new cases per week in West Africa, there will be more cases exported into other countries. This is possible via two routes:
• Foreign workers combating the spread of the virus are likely to be repatriated to their home countries. Currently the United States, United Kingdom, France and Cuba have delivered personnel in significant numbers. RMS does not consider this to be a probable source of escalation as such cases will be monitored and isolated by the public health systems already in place in those countries.
• Infected people traveling to other regions unchecked could transmit Ebola outside of West Africa. However, the capability of most countries to trace contacts is higher than in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and stronger travel control measures could be implemented if case numbers exceeded a prudent limit.
RMS said it will be updating the model with new numbers every few weeks, projecting the course of the event in near real-time.
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