Foreign Investment Campaign

Every community that needs to grow must reach out to foreign investors and Lagos State is no exception. Foreign investment helps to drive economic development across the world and it is common for economies in need of high growth rates to reach out to foreign investors for relevant economic input.

In order to be on course for the next level of economic growth in Lagos, Governor Babatunde Fashola and a team of experts from Lagos arrived in Paris on 17th December 2009, to seek meaningful investment support from French businesspersons. Lagos State is on the threshold of becoming a megacity and undergoing economic transformation dream. The trip to the capital city of France afforded the Governor and his team the opportunity of meeting with major investment facilitators in France.

Governor Fashola presented the ideas and investment possibilities in Lagos State to the Mouvement Des Enterprises De France (MEDEF), the leading club of French investors. During the presentation, Governor Fashola explained areas of investment opportunity in Lagos State and gave an abridged background of his administration's development drive and its development vision for Lagos centres on making the city a model African mega-city that will be synonymous with efficient public infrastructure, reliable security and high economic growth rate.
The Fashola administration, unlike others is interested in investment possibilities of businesspersons rather than loans to the state that will become a liability in the future. There is a lot of work that still needs to be done to successfully birth the megacity vision in realistic terms; a fact which he said is essentially an indication that there is a lot of money to be made from investing in the city's various areas of need.

Some of the areas of possible investments by foreign investors include power generation, transportation, tourism and housing which are viable and mutually enriching investments. The Lekki Free Trade Zone and the seaports in Lagos are also two advantages Lagos State has to attract investors, along with the imminent Lekki Airport on the Lekki Peninsula. Lagos State, with a population of over 17 million people, and still growing, stands out as a dependable business turf, which the French business community is invited to tap into, under the auspices of mutually benefitting arrangements.

For their own part, The French businesspersons were visibly impressed by the detailed presentation of the governor and his team and expressed interest in working with his administration in the areas mentioned, pointing out that they are aware that over 60% of French businesses in Nigeria are based in Lagos which is strong evidence of the huge commercial profitability of the City of Lagos.
There are many projects initiated in Lagos State by Governor Fashola in an endeavor to improve the physical, environmental and economic well being of the citizens of the State. Transportation, water, education are all areas that have improved. Methodically, this administration has worked on improving the economic status of Lagosians with investments both within the state and internationally.