September 15, (THEWILL) — Nigeria’s leading investment firm, Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited, recently marked its 30th anniversary in Lagos during which it unveiled its 2025 Banking Sector Report entitled ACT-BOLD. The Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Dr Ike Chioke, spoke to journalists on the sidelines — highlighting the landmark achievements of the firm and a glimpse into the future. Excerpts by Sam Diala.
Looking back, how would you describe the 30 years of Afrinvest in Nigeria’s challenging environment? What has held Afrinvest together and kept it going?
What has held us together for the last three decades is having a set of core values that define what character of company that you want to build, and those core values include characteristics like integrity, professionalism, putting your client first, excelling at what you do, and also being patient, knowing that bad times will come, and good times will come as well. But you need to have resilience to weather that storm from one cycle to the other.
In the last three decades, we have seen about five global economic contractions and expansions, plus capital market implosion like the global financial crisis of 2008/2009. There was COVID-19 that shook the entire world. Nobody expected that, coming out of COVID-19 there is this high inflation that affected the entire world. Even Nigeria is still reeling from that. It has not been easy. I think it is also a testament of resilience and abiding faith in God. To do the right thing, and knowing that ultimately, you will be rewarded for doing the right thing, is motivating.
More specifically, how do you see the economy presently and what measures should be taken to ensure that the growth trajectory is maintained?
Where we are today in Nigeria’s economic development calls for concerted efforts. The government has a lot of challenges already that it is tackling. As you know, President Ahmed Tinubu did the right thing, in my view, by removing the petrol subsidy and also by removing the FX subsidy. I think the government is now at the verge of removing a little bit of electricity subsidy. Those are the subsidies that have prevented the Nigerian economy from attaining its rightful growth trajectory.
I think what can be done better would be for the government to channel the incremental savings from the subsidies that were removed towards investing appropriately in infrastructure – fixing our roads and bridges, fixing telecommunications infrastructure, making sure that power gets to the people. We also need to invest in the human capital sector – education and healthcare. That will also bring the cost of living down for Nigerians and make sure that the 133 million people living below poverty level have some sort of cushion to withstand the shock that the economy is going through at this time.
So, your Banking Sector Report is considered timely?
Yes. We cannot leave anybody behind. It is important that we do not forget our brothers and sisters across the country who are suffering the consequences of the economic reforms introduced by the government. If the government can put that together, I would say that Nigeria is on the trajectory for growth. This is outlined in the 2025 Banking Sector Report that we launched this evening, with the acronym ACT-BOLD. We believe that Nigeria can surpass the $1 trillion economy that the Tinubu-led government aims at, if we focus on these core sectors propelled in that Report.
Please throw more light on the Banking Sector Report Acronym – ACT-BOLD
The acronym ACT-BOLD profiles seven key sectors of Nigeria’s economy: The A is for Agriculture, the C is for the Creative Sector (Nollywood and the music industry), the T is for Technology, the B is for Banking & Finance, the O is for Oil & Gas (our traditional breadwinner), the L is for Logistics and D is for Domestic Manufacturing. We believe that, given where we are in the economic cycle of Nigeria, that if we identify and focus on these seven areas, and build the under-pinning enablers – infrastructure, the telecom system, the power supply and support it with the education sector for the people of Nigeria, we believe the economy will be galvanized. A lot of people will find active opportunities for employment or even creation of businesses that will drive the economic growth of Nigeria far beyond the $1 trillion economy mark that the President Tinubu administration has proposed.
What is the outlook for Afrinvest?
Afrinvest, as you know, started as a humble corporate in 1995, established by Godwin Obaseki then called Securities Transactions & Trust Company (SecTrust). Today we are more of a diversified investment management company. The group is licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a capital market holding company. But in that context, we have a subsidiary for investment banking advisory, we have a subsidiary for asset management, we have one for securities trading, we do not only trade stocks, we trade commercial paper, FGN Bonds, and corporate bonds. We have a subsidiary that focuses on trustee services.
Our research department has become a consulting company that offers consultancy services to clients as well as producing research. And last but not the least, we have a technology company called Andromeda Technology Solutions through which we have apps that have democratized access to investment opportunities for Nigerians.
To give you an example, by the time I took over from Mr Godwin Obaseki in 2009, Afrinvset probably had no more than three or four thousand active retail customers. Today, I can say we have over 500 customer accounts and at any point in time over 125 – 200 thousand of them are active. We have our apps – Afrinvestor, a trading app for trading securities on the NGX, and Optimus by Afrinvest, a fintech platform for savings and wealth management. We see our growth trajectory being propelled in multiple ways.
We have recently closed on the acquisition of a microfinance bank and our intention is to infuse this microfinance bank into our Optimus app. This way, we will be able to deliver not just investments and savings in naira and dollar but also payments across the world, and also supporting trading with even cryptocurrencies blockchains. We just concluded a three-day retreat, the entire team of Afrinvest, with the theme ‘Scaling Beyond Boundaries’. It is our vision to scale beyond 500,000 customers to 5 million customers within the next 3-5 years. And we intend to move beyond being in Nigeria to at least one or two other countries actively positioned as a leading investment management firm in that same time frame.
