Cape Town — Obstacles to Nigerians doing business in South Africa appear to have received as much attention in talks during President Umaru Yar'Adua's state visit to South Africa as recent attacks on Nigerian and other African migrants.

A number of major South African companies operate in Nigeria, but relatively few Nigerian companies are able to do business in South Africa.

This imbalance needed to be corrected, South African President Thabo Mbeki told a news conference after a meeting between the two leaders in Cape Town on Tuesday. "We are very interested indeed to see more Nigerian companies active in the South African economy."

He said the governments had agreed to set up a team of business people from both countries to identify issues, including South African regulations, which were blocking Nigerians from playing a bigger role, and to help in "opening the necessary space."

According to South African official statistics, Nigeria is South Africa's largest import trading partner in Africa. In turn, Nigeria is South Africa's largest export market in West Africa.

Discussing the xenophobic attacks launched by South Africans against migrants in recent weeks, Mbeki said his government had apologized to Nigeria, while Yar'Adua praised Mbeki for setting an example to other nations in his handling of the violence.

"We are determined to protect the security of everybody," said Mbeki, "and we are very keen to see the reintegration of displaced people into communities as quickly as possible. We are against this notion of the segregation of foreign nationals... into exclusive camps."

"The government and the president have made a determined and committed effort to control and put a stop to the situation," responded Yar'Adua. "I was telling [Mbeki] that while in other African countries, official government action [involves] deporting other brother and sister Africans. Here the government called out troops to ensure that immigrants from Africa are protected from this kind of behaviour."

Yar'Adua arrived in South Africa on Monday for his first state visit to the country since his election in 2007. He was welcomed with a 21-gun salute in a military ceremony at South Africa's government complex in Cape Town on Tuesday, after which he held talks with Mbeki and addressed a joint sitting of both houses of the South African parliament.

On Wednesday he is scheduled to take part in a South Africa-Nigeria business forum and to visit the prison on Robben Island, off Cape Town, where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were jailed. He is then due to join the World Economic Forum for Africa, which begins in Cape Town on the same day.