I hope President Buhari has spoken with Wale Adeyemo about attracting US foreign direct investment in 2021

Ayo Akinfe

(1) In 2019, US foreign direct investment (FDI) worldwide totalled $5.96trn

(2) Within the US itself, FDI during that period totalled $246bn, with about $125bn of this coming from Japan

(3) Every industrialised nation worldwide takes FDI very seriously because it opens up new markets for their goods, creates ancillary employment back home and the returns on investment are generally high

(4) I have just been looking at the US FDI figures for 2019 and here are the top 10 - Netherlands $860bn, UK $851bn, Luxembourg $766bn, Canada $402bn, Ireland $354bn, Singapore $287bn, Bermuda $262bn, Switzerland $228bn, Australia $162bn, Germany $148bn

(5) One striking feature is that the investments in places like Luxembourg, Singapore, Bermuda and Switzerland are in financial services. Now, Nigerian interest rates are very high, so we are actually a very sound location for pension and investment funds to lodge their cash

(6) If you look at US investment in China, in 2019 it was $116bn and for Mexico it was $100bn. For Brazil it was $81bn, while for India it was $45bn. In all these nations, the investment was mainly in manufacturing and heavy industry

(7) Given the chronic lack of manufacturing capacity in Nigeria today, we desperately need FDI in heavy industry. If we can attract the kind of US investment we are seeing in Brazil, Mexico and India, we will be home and dry

(8) With the Covid-19 pandemic, many US companies are relocating from China as they have come to the conclusion that planting all your eggs in one basket is dangerous. If you look at all the main industrial capital investments, they go to populous nations like China, India, Brazil, Mexico, etc. It is President Buhari’s job to tell the rest of the world that it is unacceptable for Nigeria not to be on that list

(9) As part of his role as US deputy treasury secretary, Wale Adeyemo will oversee FDI globally. It is the job of the Nigerian government to put a case before his office. I expect that Zainab Ahmed, Niyi Adebayo and Godwin Emefiele have already put their document together and are just waiting for Mr Adeyemo to be sworn-in before submitting it

(10) As things stand, Nigeria needs FDI or we die. Without it, we will have more terrorism, more out is school children, my Almajiris, more poverty, more dilapidated infrastructure, more corruption, etc. When US yearly investment in India alone is about twice the size of Nigeria’s annual budget, it is delusional to think we can go anywhere without FDI. To make matters worse no one is buying crude oil these days anyway, so where else will the foreign exchange come from?