Nigeria has signed a multi-billion dollar deal with an Indian investment agency to support infrastructure projects including power, rails, warehousing and ports in Africa’s most populous nation.
The agreement, signed on Sept. 6 with Invest India, is expected to help the West African country industrialize its agriculture and manufacturing sectors and cut reliance on imports, the head of the government-backed infrastructure vehicle said Friday.
It’s the latest in a string of deals between the two nations as Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people, seeks to plug an infrastructure deficit and stimulate economic growth. To do this, it needs at least $3 trillion over 30 years, Angbazo said.
“We’ve got a gap of about $125 billion annually and we’re probably spending somewhere in the neighborhood of about $10 billion a year,” he said.
InfraCorp is a government-backed infrastructure investment vehicle that is co-owned by the Central Bank of Nigeria, Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority. The agency is primarily focused on transport and logistics with a potential initial investment of up to N163 billion ($212 million).
The partnership is expected to help Nigeria expand its ports so that it can process more shipping containers, Angbazo said.
“For a country of our size, we should have a container processing capacity of about 50 million containers,” he said. “We’re doing four, so you can see the gap.”
Angbazo did not disclose the dollar amounts expected from the deal.