The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority will invest as much as $1 billion over the next three years, focusing on building solar and health care infrastructure, to help boost growth in Africa’s most-populous country.
The NSIA, which is recalibrating its investment strategy this year to shield its $2.2 billion of assets from volatility in financial markets, is also looking at areas it can make a greater impact and at the same time avoid losses in an increasingly uncertain global market.
The Abuja-based fund is “in the process” of raising funds internally and from partners to implement the projects, Chief Executive Officer Aminu Umar-Sadiq said in an interview. “Maybe a third will come from us and the balance from partners,” he said, without identifying the financiers, citing confidentiality.
Africa’s largest crude producer will need to spend at least $100 billion annually to close its infrastructure gap, according to estimates by the World Bank. Almost half of its more than 200 million people lack access to grid electricity and will need more than $400 billion mainly to build power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure in a bid to reduce dependence on fossil fuels to meet its net zero targets by 2060.
The NSIA plans to accelerate economic and energy diversification for the West African nation by 2026 through investments in sectors including health care, gas industrialization, technology, power and agriculture, according to Umar-Sadiq.
The fund, one of the biggest in Africa, plans to refocus resources to where it sees a greater need such as infrastructure and buy inflation-linked bonds in the US and Europe to provide stable returns. This is after rising interest rates, surging food costs and market volatility led to a 33% drop in its 2022 earnings.
Some of its recent projects include the co-development of a $1.4 billion ammonia plant with OCP SA of Morocco and a partnership with US-based BIO Ventures for Global Health to build a $22 million cancer-treatment facility in Nigeria. It also signed an agreement this year with Vitol Group to support the country’s energy transition plan.
The agency will “proliferate” renewable energy across the country after building its first 10-megawatt solar power plant in the northern Kano state in 2022, the CEO said, adding that medical infrastructure for chronic ailments will also be given priority.
“The impact NSIA has had over the past 10 years has been phenomenal and we’re on course to do more in infrastructure,” he said.