The exponential growth rate of Chinese economic links with Africa has reached a new height as report by Oxford Business Group (OBG) has revealed that China accounts for roughly 25 per cent of Nigeria’s inbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), equivalent to roughly $6.1billion (N988.2 billion).
Oxford Business Group is a global publishing and consultancy company producing annual investment and economic reports on more than 30 countries.

Also, recent data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), showed that China was the country’s second largest source of imports for the first six months of 2011.

“About N737 billion ($4.57 billion) of goods entered Nigeria from the Asian giant during the first two quarters of the year, equivalent to about 11 per cent of total imports. Exports to China for the same period were smaller, at N390 billion ($2.42 billion), or about 6 per cent of the total. Nonetheless, China was overall the second-largest trade partner for Nigeria during the first two quarters of 2011, second only to the United States,” NBS reported.

Though the NBS did not report individual categories of imports by country, then Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Jubril Martins Kuye, had last year told newsmen that Nigeria primarily imports mechanical, electronic, textile and light industrial products from China, while goods flowing in the opposite direction include agricultural products, minerals and textile raw materials.

Ghana has cut fuel subsidies following an increase in crude oil prices and the depreciation of the Ghana cedi currency, the head of Ghana’s National Petroleum Authority (NPA) said in a statement. Nigeria cut the subsidy as a New Year gift to the citizens.

Ghana, which joined the club of oil producers in West Africa last year, has come under increased pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)  to remove the fuel subsidies.

The IMF has urged countries across West and Central Africa to cut fuel subsidies, which they say are not effective in directly aiding the poor, but do promote corruption and smuggling.

The past months have seen governments in Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon and Chad moving to cut state subsidies on fuel.

Alex Mould the Chief Executive Officer of the NPA, said the cumulative effect of the rise in crude oil prices this year and the about 5.7 per cent depreciation of the cedi meant a 25 per cent increase in cedi terms in the cost of procuring crude oil and petroleum products since January. Mould said Ghana has spent about 450 million cedis ($276 million) on fuel subsidies in 2011.

The price change effective from December 29, will see the cost of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) increase by 30 per cent while petrol and diesel will go up 15 per cent at pump.

Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd. and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., China’s second and third largest foundries behind Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., said Thursday (Dec. 29) that they completed a merger between the two companies.
Hua Hong and Grace entered into a legally binding agreement to effect a merger between the two companies on Sept. 13, the companies said. The merger was completed with a stock-for-stock transaction, with Hua Hong issuing new shares to the existing shareholders of Grace in exchange for all Grace outstanding shares. Other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Reuters reported the neogitation few weeks ago and we can confirm that the merger has gone through.

The Mobile Market retails menswear and womenswear including shoes, handbags, jewelry, perfume, shirts, t shirts, ties, sunglasses, beauty essentials and a lot more.

The aim of the Mobile Market is to provide affordable fashion for the Nigerian youth; from Made in Nigeria goods to International Designer & High Street Labels. Rather than host events in a single location, the Mobile Market hosts periodic sales in strategic locations all around Lagos with the plan to expand beyond Nigeria’s commercial capital to major cities and campuses around the country.

The Mobile Market provides an avenue for small businesses and individuals to showcase their products and works, meet clients and at the same time provide shoppers with opportunities to shop at affordable prices by hosting fairs every month.

The mobile market creates an avenue for small goods traders and buyers to meet, network and trade in a fun and relaxed environment. Previous Mobile Market events have been successful and have since evolved to include various types of industries from fashion to art to electronics and lifestyle products.

The maiden event was on 16th of December 2010.

Behind all the well orchestrated public relations work around the launch of 3G and 4G services by various Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telecommunications companies in Nigeria, none of them is offering real broadband to consumers, industry analysts have said.

But more importantly, internet consumers living in Nigeria are still paying far more for broadband services than their counterparts in mature markets, putting it completely out of the reach of majority of the populace. Industry analysts told Business Day yesterday that out of over 40 million Nigerians already connected to the internet, only about 12 million, representing around 3 percent, have access to efficient broadband internet.

This, according to them, is inspite of the falling prices of bandwidth capacity due to the growing number of undersea cables on the coastline. Industry estimates show that some $2.24 billion (N336 billion) has been invested in deploying underwater cables expected to lower bandwidth cost and improve availability, but Nigerian internet users still complain about the slow and exasperating access to the information superhighway. Richard Hurst, senior analyst at Ovum noted yesterday: “Demand for broadband services in emerging markets continues to be stifled by high prices. In some countries, broadband pricing was double or triple the price of an equivalent service in a more developed market.

“In addition, lower GDP per capita in Nigeria, means that broadband is only available to the highest socio-economic groups.” Commenting on the state of broadband service delivery in Nigeria, Chima Onyekwere, chairman, Linkserve, pioneer ISP, said: “When we defined broadband four years ago, we said that broadband was anything from 128kbs. “Today, we can not define broadband in that manner.

Broadband is actually 4 megabits (MEG) per second. Therefore, I can confidently say that no telcos or ISP is delivering 4 MEG to any consumer in the market.” According to Onyekwere, telcos don’t have 4 MEG available to them, and it is an illusion to think that Nigerians are enjoying broadband in its true form.