Vice -President Yemi Osinbajo in a warm hand shake with the Executive Director, Commercial and Consumer Banking, Lagos & South West, Fidelity Bank Plc. Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe at the ongoing 2018 Intra-African Trade Fair, Cairo. Egypt.
From Nik Ogbulie in Cairo
Leveraging a very high retail banking base buoyed by an increasing Small and Medium scale enterprises clientele foundation, Fidelity Bank Plc has closed deals with various trade partners running into over $100 million within the trade exhibition period in Cairo.
Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe, Executive Director of the bank explained this to the media amidst a flowing volume of visitor’s to the bank’s stand. The deal which offers the bank very impressive finance and advisory roles for the export and import market within and outside Africa is believed to have been some of the highest volume of deals closed by any Nigeria bank at the trade exhibition, even as the fair is still ongoing for days away.
It was also observed that the bank is the only Nigerian bank, a part of the finance institutions, that sponsored about ten of its customers to the fair with intention of further empowering them psychologically to begin to look into the global trade space as a prelude to growing their business skills with the aim of moving into the Africa region to trade among neighbours.
According to Onyeali-Ikpe, governments in Africa must strive to create serious infrastructure through which trade can flourish in the region besides facilitating this exhibition. She noted that because technology drives trade, it is more important that very relevant facilities must be put in place.
She noted that an effective transformation of Africa must be achieved through strong and structured trade opportunities involving huge amount of money.
She urged government to fix the road networks linking the major ports so that most export materials driven to the various ports do not over stay before final shipping.
According to Frank Onyebu, one of the exhibitors brought from Lagos, Nigeria, by Fidelity Bank, his participation has given him a bigger spectrum of the size of the market.
