French President, François Hollande, weekend
gathered top 10 entrepreneurs across the Middle
East, Europe and Africa, in Paris to effectively
deliberate on ways of enhancing and promoting
trade relations in Europe. The meeting became necessary as a result of the
significant drop in the trade relationship between
Africa and France. For instance, foreign
investments into Africa rose from 15 billion 2000
to 118 billion in 2014. Among the industrialists at the private meeting
with Hollande were Africa’s richest man and
President, Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote;
Director, Bmce-Bank Group of Africa, Othmane
ben Jelloun; CEO of Orange Telephony Group,
Stephane Richard and Founder of the media group, AFRICA 24, Constant Nemale.


The meeting is coming on the edge of the France-
Africa Summit in January 2017, held in Bamako,
Mali, the French Head of State Francois Hollande
chose to make of Aliko Dangote and this group
of entrepreneurs a real strength of proposal for
the construction of a new economic partnership between Europe and Africa. In a statement in Lagos, Dangote said: “The
meeting was very fruitful. We emphasized the
need for partnerships, do business amongst
ourselves and to also transfer technology. There
is a need for investments both in Africa and also
here in France. You know the more you invest the more you remove terrorism and all the other
security challenges. Public –private partnership is
very important because it will bring lots of
opportunities to Africa and France. It is a very
vast market, we can sell our products here and
they can as well sell theirs in our respective countries and this can lead to a very good
transformational activity.” He further said: “With the European partners,
what we expect from them is the technology
transfer corporation, between European
companies and our companies. Obviously we
need a lot of training. Education is one the issues
we want to look into and then we need a long- term financing, because we do need a lot of
export credit which will help quite a lot”


It would be recalled that Nigeria and France
launched a Trade and Investment Council in
2014, with the aim of doubling trade flows
between both countries from the then
N1.049trillion ($6.4 billion) to about
N2.098trillion ($12.7 billion) in four years. The Council was also expected to increase the
flow of investment between Nigeria and France
by 50 percent in four years, under the
chairmanship of the then Chief Executive Officer
of Leadway Assurance and Vice-Chairman of the
Nigeria-France Chamber of Commerce, Hassan Oye-Odukale and CEO and Chairman of PAI,
Lionel Zinsou. The former Minister of Industry, Trade and
Investment Olusegun Aganga then said: “Trade
between Nigeria and France grew from N550
billion in 2008 to well over N1trillion in 2012,
one of the fastest growth rates we have seen
with any one of our trading partners.”



m.guardian.ng/business-services/hollande-meets-dangote-others-to-boost-trade/


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