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Oparaugo… Selling Opportunities In Africa To The World

By Olawunmi Ojo
17 July 2015   |   11:50 pm
With vast resources and opportunities for investments and businesses, the unavailability of information, more than anything else, have hindered corresponding massive investments coming into Africa. This, of course, is explainable. Without information, it sure would be an uphill task to access any country’s investment opportunities. However, there appears an end in sight to this challenge…
Oparaugo

Oparaugo

With vast resources and opportunities for investments and businesses, the unavailability of information, more than anything else, have hindered corresponding massive investments coming into Africa.

This, of course, is explainable. Without information, it sure would be an uphill task to access any country’s investment opportunities.

However, there appears an end in sight to this challenge and Africa may just be full of smiles soon.

Footprint to Africa Limited, a platform dedicated to reporting on investment opportunities in Africa to investors all over the world, is here to bridge that gap.

Osita Oparaugo, a lawyer, is the President and CEO of Footprint to Africa Limited. And he is being driven on this initiative just because he wants to be part of Africa’s success story.

The platform is a business/financial news resource company and investment bridge based in Nigeria. Its main objective is to promote foreign investment in Africa by highlighting areas with potential growth and high investment
returns for investors who want to be part of the African success story.

It is an online news platform that reports daily on such opportunities as they unfold in all African countries. With 22 correspondents stationed across Africa and 18 in-house staff members, it interviews heads of states, heads of businesses and government agencies, gathering the best of investment information for would-be investors.

“We recognize that unavailability of proper investment information is a major setback to developmental growth and that it contributes to lack of basic market data which not only prevents attempts to generate proper market insights but also creates a strong barrier to foreign direct investment in Africa,” Oparaugo says of what led to the birth of the initiative.

He continues; “To achieve our aim, we adopted two strategies, namely: interviewing the various heads of governments, various government agencies as well as business leaders in Africa in order to make available information about the massive but untapped investment opportunities in Africa. These are reported on our platform valued at over two million viewers in 97 countries, across six continents.”

Reacting to a report that stated that trading among African countries is on the decline, Oparaugo, a British trained-lawyer and who also did Project Finance and Business Strategy at Harvard, says that no matter how negative the report is, African businesses are beginning to understand the need for synergies. “On our platform now, we launched a service called the Marketsquare Africa as a platform where business synergies are formed. This is trying to strengthen the intra-African investments and partnerships. We speak with business leaders in Africa everyday on the need to form partnerships, synergies and joint ventures.

“The Marketsquare Africa is a platform where business partnerships are formed. If you have a license, business or a business idea and you seek investors, technical partners or a joint venture partnership to birth and grow your business, then The Marketsquare Africa is for you. Come let’s meet at The Marketsquare Africa.

“Footprints to Africa is a platform telling the world constantly that there are positive opportunities in Africa. And the only way to do this successfully is to first strengthen the information base and draw the world to Africa because the continent is the next market frontier.

“Meanwhile, apart from making the information available, we are also approaching government to ensure that they support investors when they come through adequate security, power provision through alternative means, encouragement of exports through tax incentives, putting in place good road networks and the like.”

Oparaugo explains that the Footprint to Africa project is a burden for him because of the decline he has observed in patronage of the West and as against the availability of massive opportunities for Africa.

And in trying to ensure that those opportunities are mostly utilised by Africans, he has been involved in number of activities to promote the ideals of the project.

“Through our signature African Development Project, we host events in various African countries and across various sectors. We believe by doing this, potential investors can see, firsthand, the real market potential in Africa and will be able to interact with their local counterparts. Focused and high-level, our events will provide the perfect environment to initiate new business relationships, identify opportunities and achieve face-to-face contact that overcrowded tradeshows cannot deliver.

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