FG to create 3.5m jobs through agriculture by 2015 - Jonathan

The Federal Government through President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday at an international conference on palm oil production reiterated its commitment to create 3.5 million jobs through the agricultural value chains of production, processing and marketing by 2015.

He expressed government’s determination to add 20 million metric tonnes of food to the domestic supply by 2015. “We have identified oil palm as one of the important commodities and key drivers to promote the value chain initiative. “We have also intensified efforts to provide enabling environment.”
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How Tony Elumelu Made $123 million

Tony O. Elumelu knows what’s he’s looking for.



According to Forbes, Elumelu—a Nigerian economist, banker, investor and philanthropist born in Jos, 1963 who earned his M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Lagos and later graduated from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Programme—made his first fortune by acquiring a small, struggling Nigerian commercial bank and building it into the United Bank of Africa Group, a leading financial
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China telecoms: Mobility problems

China Mobile is struggling to hold its own against innovative new competitors. Can the company reinvent itself?

China Mobile, the country's largest wireless operator by subscribers, seems to have lost its way of late. Its basic GSM service, which used to rake in heaps of money, lost nearly 12m customers during the first four months of this year. Its 3G TD-SCDMA service has had a bumpy start. To make the situation even more precarious, 4G TD-LTE is making little headway without a licence, and it is not clear how many customers it will recruit once rolled out.


Meanwhile, China Mobile's traditional SMS services – once the most popular in the land – saw volume and revenue slide by about 7% in 2012 while revenue from voice inched up only 2%. And the wireless behemoth is under attack from a number of OTT operators in areas of mobile IM, P2P video, games and mobile apps. Many of these OTTs were once China Mobile’s service providers, but have gradually turned into fierce
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Money Market Dealers Wait over CRR hike

Await maturity of N170bn short term assets.

At the financial market yesterday, dealers resorted to a 'wait and see' approach, following the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) decision which targets easy money at the disposal of Nigerian banks.
Amid huge expectations that this decision would spike rates, BusinessDay checks at the money market showed that while there were only about10 basis points reduction across various tenors in the Nigerian Interbank Offer Rates (NIBOR), rate for 7 days money remained unchanged.
The wait and see game by financial market dealers was linked to their expectation of N170billion worth of short term assets which mature into the system today. Though at the Treasury Bills (T-Bills), there was significant sell-off; same as in the bond market –indicating sales pressure on fixed income
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Facebook shares soar as users, mobile ads climb

Facebook Inc delivered strong evidence it can thrive on smartphones and tablets on Wednesday, reporting a much better-than-anticipated surge in mobile advertising revenue in the second quarter that ignited
a nearly 17 percent share rally.

The world's No. 1 social network also reported an uptick in daily visitors to its service, allaying worries that a new crop of fast-growing mobile upstarts like WhatsApp and Snapchat could cut into the time consumers spend on Facebook.

Facebook's growing appeal to consumers and advertisers combined to deliver the company's strongest ad revenue growth since the third quarter of 2011. Ad prices, which declined at Google and Yahoo, increased 13 percent at Facebook, Reuters reports.

"Facebook has nearly 700 million people that use the platform daily. There's no bigger audience on the
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I’ll Establish Shea Butter Processing Plant in Nigeria - UK-based Business Owner

Emi & Ben, a natural skin-care company founded in the United Kingdom
in 2009, depends on shea butter produced by rural women in Nigeria.
Ronke Ige, founder/CEO, Emi & Ben, in this interview with OLUYINKA
ALAWODE, speaks on the business and the company's growth plans.
Excerpts:

Inspiration

This business idea came about because of my love for shea butter. While I was growing up with my my brother and sister in London, my parents always used shea butter as a moisturiser to tend our skins. However, it is not readily available in the UK, so every time any of my family members was travelling to Nigeria, my parents would always get or tell the person to bring back shea butter for
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The Role of the Board Chairman

The Chairman of the Board is Primus Inter Pares (the first among equals or first among peers) on the Board of Directors of every company and typically elected by members of the Board of Directors who
also determine the period for which he/she is to hold office. In other jurisdictions, the Chairman of the Board is elected annually by members of the Board at the first Board meeting after each Annual  General Meeting or between Annual General Meetings upon the resignation, death, disqualification or removal of an incumbent
Chairman. The Chairman should be a non-executive director and it is desirable that he/she should satisfy any independence standards set by the Board, applicable law or relevant Corporate Governance Code and
best practice.

Selecting a Board Chair is a very important process in the life of any company. Most organizations adopt the democratic approach spelt out in the Companies and Allied Matters Act by voting for one of them to
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Trustfund Gave Out N230m to Shareholders

The board of Trustfund Pensions Plc has announced a dividend pay-out of N230 million for the year 2012 with shareholders receiving 23 kobo per N1 share compared to 15 kobo in 2011.

Nigeria Labour Congres, NLC; Trade Union Congress, TUC; and Nigeria Employers Consultative Association, NECA, who are major shareholders of Trustfund Pensions expressed delight at the news of the boost in dividend.

The board also announced the confirmation of the appointment of the Acting Managing Director, Mrs. Helen

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Nigeria: Agro-Commodities Market Bigger Than NSE - Cban

Kano — Commodity Brokers Association of Nigeria (CBAN) has said that based on the analysis of the economic performance of the country in 2012 that gave the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as approximately N47.55 trillion and the benchmark of 38.4 percent of GDP to agriculture in the 2013 budget, the commodities market can be valued at N18.26 trillion.

This, it also said, clearly indicates that by market capitalization, the agro-commodities market is larger than the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Speaking during a stakeholders meeting in collaboration with the Abuja Securities and Commodity Exchange (ASCE) in Kano, the newly elected President of CBAN, Altine Shehu Kajiji, said with market capitalization of N11.77 trillion as at May 21, 2013, agro-commodities market is larger than the Nigerian Stock Exchange

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Zambeef: A rare meat success in Africa A fast-growing food firm is looking beyondits home country for customers

THE patrons of Manda Hill, a shopping centre in a posh part of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, like their beef and chicken extra lean and in big portions.
The meat on sale at the mall’s branch of Shoprite, a South African supermarket chain, comes in trays with up to a dozen cuts. Meat is delivered three times a week. Cutting, trimming, seasoning and packing is done to strict guidelines in a glass-walled room behind the display cabinets. The visible butchers are like a badge of freshness for prosperous Lusakans, who shop here in droves. The store is said to be the busiest in the whole Shoprite empire.

The butchery is run by Zambeef, a fast-growing food company based in Lusaka. It operates meat at all 20 Shoprite stores across Zambia as well as in the chain’s newer outlets in Ghana and Nigeria. Zambeef’s eggs, milk and yogurt drinks are stocked by Shoprite and other local supermarkets. Zambeef has around 100 shops of its own, making it one of the biggest chains in the continent outside South Africa. It is thus well placed to serve a burgeoning class of consumer between the well-heeled shoppers of Manda Hill and the
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African countries seek investors with international bond issuance

African countries are currently chasing international investors with many economies in the region, disclosing plans to raise dollar bonds.
Rwanda will sell its first international bond by the end of July, as it seeks to improve infrastructure strained by a decade of economic growth faster than 8 percent, President Paul Kagame said.

The nation will debut and sell about 350 million Euros ($458m) in debt before the end of the budget year in the international bond market, as African countries - from Angola to Nigeria - plan record debt issuance.

Nigeria is seeking to borrow $1 billion on overseas markets, twice as much as it sold in 2011, while Angola
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Chevron to sell stake in Nigerian oil blocks

An international oil company operating in Nigeria, Chevron, has announced its intention to divest its stakes in two shallow water oil blocks in the country.
The company said on Tuesday the two oil blocks, OML 83 and OML 85, held an estimated 200 million barrels of oil and an unknown quantity of natural gas. It, however, said there had been no production yet in the two blocks. “As part of a continuous process of portfolio evaluation and business prioritization, Chevron Nigeria Limited has put forward its interests in two oil mining leases for auction,” a spokesman of
the firm said.

Chevron owns 40 per cent stake in 13 shallow water blocks with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, and also has several deep offshore assets. Its 2012 net daily production in Nigeria averaged
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Dangote Among Top 25 Richest According to Forbe

Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian billionaire and Africa's richest man has become the first African entrepreneur to lay claim to a $20 billion. Fortune as the stock value of his largest holding, Dangote Cement, leaped just about three-fourths since March when Forbes released its annual ranking of the world's richest people.

Aliko Dangote's 93% stake in the cement company is now worth $19.5 billion. Add this to his controlling stakes in other publicly-listed companies like Dangote Sugar and National Salt Company of Nigeria and his significant shareholdings in other blue-chips like Zenith Bank, UBA Group and Dangote Flour; his extensive real estate portfolio, jets, yachts and current cash position, which includes more than $300 million in recently awarded Dangote Cement dividends, Dangote is now worth more than $20 billion. Put into context, the Nigerian billionaire is now among the top 25 richest people in the world, richer than Russia's richest man, Alisher Usmanov, richer than India's Lakshmi Mittal and running neck and neck with India's Mukesh Ambani. He is catching up to such Americans as Google's billionaire founders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin.

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