APA – Lagos (Nigeria)
The report by the World Bank that the Nigerian currency, the Naira, is among the worst-performing currencies in Africa is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Thursday.
The Punch reports that the World Bank has said that the Nigerian naira is among the worst-performing currencies in Africa.
It noted that the currency weakened by nearly 40 per cent against the US dollar since a mid-June devaluation.
The global bank explained in its report titled, ‘Africa’s Pulse: An analysis of issues shaping Africa’s economic future (October 2023 | Volume 28).’
It stated that, “So far this year, the Nigerian naira and the Angolan kwanza are among the worst performing currencies in the region: these currencies have posted a year-to-date depreciation of nearly 40 per cent.
“The weakening of the naira was triggered by the central bank’s decision to remove trading restrictions on the official market. For the kwanza, it was the decision of the central bank to stop defending the currency as a result of low oil prices and greater debt payments.”
Other currencies with significant losses so far in 2023, according to the World Bank, included South Sudan (33 per cent), Burundi (27 per cent), the Democratic Republic of Congo (18 per cent), Kenya (16 per cent), Zambia (12 per cent), Ghana (12 per cent), and Rwanda (11 per cent). It noted that parallel exchange market rates are also compounding inflationary problems for some countries in the African region.
The newspaper says that the Nigerian Government has said it will convert 10 million Premium Motor Spirit vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas in the next 36 months.
In a statement on Wednesday, the spokesperson for the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas), Louis Ibah, said the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ekperikpe Ekpo, stated this while on a panel tagged “Energy Talk” at the ongoing ADIPEC 2023 conference and exhibition in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
According to the Minister, the initiative was in partnership with the private sector.
“Our ministry is working with the organised private sector to roll out over two million CNG conversions kits for free within the next nine months to push the utilisation of CNG as main fuel for vehicles nationwide. This initiative is aimed at converting 10million vehicles from PMS to CNG in the next 36 months,” he said.
Ekpo said key benefits of the initiative include, creating over 100,000 jobs for Nigerians, increasing government savings from reduced subsidy payout for the importation of PMS, reducing carbon emission following the utilization of clean gas to drive internal combustion engines.
He reiterated the commitment of the Federal Government in creating an enabling operational and fiscal environment to support investments in the upstream, midstream and downstream gas sectors.
According to him, the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is poised to promote business around Nigeria’s abundant natural gas resources.
“This is evident in the actions of Mr. President when he split the Ministry of Petroleum Resources into Oil & Gas respectively. This singular action is a testament to President Tinubu’s resolve to promote gas commercialization in Nigeria for export and domestic utilisation,” Ekpo said.
The Guardian reports that amid rising concerns over instability across Africa and its impact on development efforts, the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina, has made a call to action on prioritising investment decisions that focus on peace-building in making a transition from policy dialogue to investment.
According to Adesina, at the Africa Resilience Forum, peace and security in Africa must be an aim of investment decisions aimed at exploring ways to strengthen the resilience of the continent’s people and states.
Speaking on the year’s forum theme ‘Financing Security, Peace and Development for a Resilient Africa’, Adesina said reversing the current trends and establishing an alliance of partners to adopt a new investment approach that favours peace would change the development-peace-security paradigm on the continent.
“The Africa Resilience Forum is a call to action to work together and make a transition from policy dialogue to investment, and then from investment to impact and the institution has a strategy for addressing fragility, building resilience in Africa, the aim of which is to bring an end to, in particular, the ‘triangle of disaster’ – rural poverty, youth unemployment and environmental degradation,” he said.
AfDB Group’s Vice President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, emphasized that violence can be eliminated by adopting peace-based actions, noting that the bank was the first development finance institution (DFI) to incorporate the issues of peace and fragility into its programmes.
She added that there is a need for innovative approaches to financing peace, security and development in African countries that find themselves in situations of fragility, sometimes driven by conflict which can be achieved through governments, the private sector, civil society and development partners cooperating closely.
The newspaper says that the World Bank has urged Nigeria and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to ensure cost-effective private sector reforms, uniform policy enforcement across firm sizes and regulatory alignment with regional trading partners among other policies to overcome the challenge of slowing growth and create jobs.
The World Bank also urged governments of the region to help identify and support early-stage growth of businesses through more inclusive procurement practices and promotion of local businesses abroad to enhance human capital.
The World Bank stated this in its latest Africa’s Pulse report while calling for investment in education to boost semi-skilled occupations for the region.
According to the report, the region’s poorest and most vulnerable individuals continue to bear the brunt of economic slowdown, as weak growth translates into slow poverty reduction and poor job growth.
The report stated that while Africa contributes 12 per cent of the global working-age population, SSA owns only two per cent of the global capital stock.
The report further noted that the development of labour-intensive manufacturing seems to be missing in Africa and limiting further effects of indirect job creation in support services and international trade.
This, the report noted, might be partly due to the lack of capital, which continues to hamper the structural transformation required for quality jobs.
The World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, Andrew Dabalen, stressed that with up to 12 million young Africans entering the labour market across the region each year, it has never been more urgent for policymakers to transform their economies and deliver growth to people through better jobs.
He said the current growth rates in the region are inadequate to create enough high-quality jobs to meet increases in the working-age population.
GIK/APA