Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a critically acclaimed Nigerian author who gave a stirring TED talk titled “The Danger of a Single Story”. In that highly recommended talk, Chimamanda provokes the western fallacy that Africans live in a dark jungle, swinging on trees and devoid of modern creature comforts. She also turns the spotlight onto herself and how she had also fallen into the trap of making uninformed and high handed assumptions about “poor” people in her own country. I have to admit that I had also created a single story about Nigeria and its people based on the media narrative of corruption and perpetual political upheaval.

I recently visited Lagos for the third time. The city of Lagos is Africa’s most populous urban area and is estimated to have 26 million people in a country of over 220 million. The sheer volume of human and vehicular traffic make Nairobi’s traffic look like the trickle out of a Nairobi County water tap. It has had its fair share of target crime challenges some of which I believe are exaggerated in order to maintain a thriving private security business. On this trip however, I interacted heavily with local professionals and entrepreneurs who proudly took our group out to world class restaurants and clubs where bottles of Dom Perignon champagne are bought by the crate and ubiquitously consumed like Ketepa tea.

The highlight of the visit was a trip to the Lagos Free Zone (LFZ) which is a two hour maddening drive, 60 kilometres east of bustling Lagos. LFZ is a classic example of a public-private partnership creating a free trade zone for foreign investors on African shores. As you approach the 2,100 acres of the LFZ, the first thing you see are multiple building cranes around acres of oil storage tanks. Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Company owned by a warm blooded son of the Nigerian soil, Aliko Dangote, stands tall as a towering exemplar of native African entrepreneurship. While Nigeria has four state owned refineries, their decrepit state due to years of mismanagement means that the oil producing nation has to export most of their crude oil while importing about 80% of refined petroleum products.

Dangote’s US$19 billion private investment of equity and debt targeted to producing refined petroleum products, petrochemicals and fertilizers has generated great excitement at a macroeconomic level. The Central Bank of Nigeria’s Governor Godwin Emefiele is quoted as claiming that Dangote’s refinery will save the country over $26 billion in foreign exchange as the products will now be purchased in a depreciation weary local currency. The Nigerian government undertook a public private partnership with a Singaporean conglomerate Tolaram to provide a $2.5 billion investment in the LFZ that includes housing, medical facilities, roads, a police and fire station as well as power and water supply to this island of industrial activity. Tolaram also undertook the project development, capital raise and construction of Lekki Port, Nigeria’s first deep sea port adjacent to the LFZ, which is jointly owned with the Nigerian Port Authority and the Lagos State Government. The port received its first ship in April this year.

Other than the refinery, the LFZ is a well-designed industrial zone and a manufacturing base to multinationals such as Colgate Palmolive and Kelloggs. The financial incentives to put up a manufacturing concern in the LFZ are evidence of a government that is throwing the whole kit and caboodle at the investment attraction door. Companies are given 100% exemption from federal and state taxes and levies, while being allowed to remit 100% of their profits and dividends free from withholding tax. Companies are allowed 100% foreign ownership with no limit on the number of expatriates that they can bring in to work. There are no import duties applicable on goods imported from outside the country to be used in the manufacturing and up to 100% of the finished goods can be “exported” into Nigeria after payment of appropriate duties.

Our political elite waxes lyrical about Singapore, Singapore and, in case you missed it, Singapore as the posterchild of economic turnarounds. The Nigerians have taken it a notch higher by bringing Singaporean commercial expertise into their country to help them build a world class trading zone that has the potential to be a game changer in converting the single story we have built about Nigeria’s economic history. More importantly, perhaps we can change our political benchmarking tours to south east Asia and head to our very own western Africa shores to see homegrown billionaires and Singaporeans investing in Africa.

[email protected]

Twitter: @carolmusyoka