Nigeria and several other African countries have received €108 million in financing through the European Investment Bank’s Boost Africa programme during the past decade, helping to generate roughly 15,000 jobs across sub-Saharan Africa.
Investment and jobs
Gautier Mignot, the European Union’s ambassador to Nigeria and the Economic Community of West African States, announced the figures at a media briefing in Abuja on Wednesday. He said the initiative had also mobilised almost €400 million in further investment from other sources.
Mignot said Boost Africa was intended to provide more than funding. The programme also supports the wider business environment that startups and expanding companies need to endure, grow and compete effectively.
He identified Africa’s young entrepreneurs as a major economic resource, arguing that innovative companies can support employment, deepen domestic supply chains and create durable opportunities for growth.
Nigeria, he added, has one of the continent’s most active entrepreneurial communities. In his view, backing innovation and business creation is critical to long-term economic expansion and employment.
Mignot said the creation of a genuinely pan-African company would be a stronger measure of value than success in a single market. He pointed to a Nigerian business developing a successful product in Lagos and then expanding to Ghana, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa as an example.
Programme structure
Moussa Nkoulima, the EIB’s country relationship manager for Nigeria, said Boost Africa combines financing with technical support and measures to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The initiative began in 2016 through a partnership between the EIB and the African Development Bank. It received backing from the EU and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, and was created to help close the shortage of early-stage finance available to African entrepreneurs.
Nkoulima said the EIB has partnered with six venture-capital funds through the programme. The bank’s €108 million commitment helped draw a further €400 million from additional investors.
