The Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Heike Harmgart, outlines the bank’s expansion plans, investment pipeline for Nigeria, and explains why fixing the power sector is critical to unlocking private investment. Nume Ekeghe presents the excerpts
Your new Lagos office is part of your Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) strategy. What is the roadmap for opening additional offices, which countries are next?
The Lagos office is the first of our five new countries of operation, namely Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin. I am travelling from here to open the Dakar office next week, so Senegal is next. We will officially open our Nairobi office in September, while Abidjan and Cotonou will follow in October and November. By the end of the year, we expect to have opened offices in all five countries. Ghana will become the sixth office. The application for Ghana to become a member and shareholder is currently before Parliament, so we are waiting for that process to conclude. We are already open for business in all five countries and, in our very first year of operations, we have invested roughly $500 million across different markets in a variety of sectors in SSA.
