Abuja - Nigeria — The 2nd ECOWAS Investment Forum opens in Lagos on Thursday 15th September 2011 under the theme: "Showcasing Investment and Financial opportunities in ECOWAS," with the Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government and Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, as Special Guest of Honour. Organized by the ECOWAS Commission in collaboration with the Association of Investment Promotion Agencies of West African States (IPAWAS) and the West African Bankers Association (WABA), the two-day Forum seeks to harmonize the platform for investment promotion in the region and access to the synergy of cooperation.
The other objectives include promoting investment across the region and providing a platform for the sharing of experiences among investment promotion agencies in Member States, showcasing the ECOWAS investment climate to the world, and providing a window for vertical and horizontal integration of private sector activities. The Forum will also provide the opportunity for networking and partnership of ECOWAS private sector operators and financial institutions with investors from the rest of the world, sourcing of long-term funds for projects and regional financial institutions, and for assisting ECOWAS Member States' Investment Promotion Agencies to access technical support from relevant agencies across the world.
The ECOWAS region is endowed with a vast but largely untapped natural and human resources complemented with a market potential of some 300 million consumers. To harness these huge potentialities, the ECOWAS Commission has been intensively reforming, and pursuing programmes and projects aimed at improving the regional business environment through its integration programmes. Business and investment laws, trade and customs regimes harmonization as well as cooperation in power, energy, water resources and agricultural development, are some of the key regional initiatives to ensure free trade, coordinated policy environment and single investment market within the region.
To demonstrate the viability and security of investments in the region, success stories of cross-border investments in the ECOWAS region will be showcased at the Forum. Corporate leaders in the private sector and policy makers in government and multilateral development institutions within and outside the region will also sit in dialogue to assess the ECOWAS business environment, project improvements in investment climate and advocate reforms required to enhance the region's attractiveness to intraregional investment.
Among dignitaries expected to take part in the Forum are the Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola, (SAN), a former Managing Director of World Bank and Nigeria's Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, her Trade and Investment counterpart Dr. Olusegun Aganga, as well as Prof. Bart Nnaji, Nigeria's Minister of Power, Minister of African Integration, Cote d'Ivoire, Adama Bictogo, Sierra Leone's Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Richard Konteh, Liberian Senate President, Senator Cletus Wotorson and Dr. Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director General, UNIDO. Others include the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, President, Dangote Group, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, President, Africa Business Roundtable, Mr. Segun Agbaje, Group Managing Director, GTBank Plc, his United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc counterpart, Mr. Phillips Oduoza as well as Timothy Prewitt, Managing Director, MARKETS, USAID, and Dr. William C. Joern, President, Business Development Associates, USA.
The First ECOWAS Investment Forum held in Brussels, Belgium in 2010, drew investors and other stakeholders from across the globe and generated a great interest around the investment potentialities in West Africa.
