Regulation Is Stiffling Pension Fund Potential

Iran has reopened the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial vessels, ending a seven-week disruption that has upended economies and societies across the globe, the country's foreign minister said on Friday.

The announcement immediately triggered a tumble in global oil prices which had spiked as demand outstripped supply across the globe.

Tehran's announcement comes after Israel and Lebanon announced a 10-day ceasefire in a conflict where more than 2, 000 people in Lebanon, and 15 Israelis have been killed since late February.

According to Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is contingent on the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

The chart of comments is open, and some of source is reading from Methods on Chile Termination from over 2300 cities and 138 countries to bring you the Good Morning Africa podcast. Good morning Africa. Welcome to BojaPost and Everything Business in Africa. I'm with the DOM from Multiplex on Twitter K Financial News, and you can find me at With The Dom. Mr. John Ekenem joins us to have a lengthy conversation on pension funds and why they are the right vehicle for infrastructure development in Africa. This and so much more on this episode. And we wanted to start with your understanding on why pension funds are uniquely suited to financing infrastructure and long-term development assets.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Okay, so infrastructure, I mean, let's start with the value infrastructure brings, the economic sense and also the social sense of society. Infrastructure is designed to enable movement, to enable connectivity, to also ensure that social life has the quality required for people to deliver value and also ensure that businesses can deliver services across different geographical regions and deliver value to their customers. And infrastructure, you know, inherently it's a long-term asset. And so if you want to design a road, the minimum lifespan of a road should be like 50 years. And for rail systems, you're looking at 100 years and above. And since infrastructure is long-term, it also needs the financing that will live with that asset over the long-term period. Financing for infrastructure comes at two stages. First is the construction stage, where you might need financing for two to three or four years, depending on the size of that infrastructure. But the most important aspect is the operational and maintenance financing that the infrastructure needs to deliver the services and the value that is required of that asset. And so pension funds are strategically designed to support infrastructure because they are long-term funds. And so it is well designed to support infrastructure projects that are also long-term. For instance, um, a pension fund that is getting monies from workers that are going to be in the workplace for 20 and 30 years and 30 years and above, there is the opportunity for the pension funds to get that money throughout the life, the working life of any citizen in Africa. And so that pension fund is strategically placed to support infrastructure over long term because at the point where someone needs his pension at retirement, he would have had a long-term opportunity to use that uh fund to support infrastructure, and that fund can be refinanced through more people coming into the labor space. So naturally, pension funds are designed to support long-term infrastructure because they are long-term in nature as well, and they can support infrastructure, particularly to help improve economic and social lives in our society. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

How can African countries better align pension savings with development priorities such as energy, transport, and urban infrastructure?

SPEAKER_00 3:59

In Africa today, um infrastructure is still a major challenge. And Africans are very enterprising, and Africans want to move more, want to connect more, want to trade more, want to interact more. However, the lack of infrastructure is impeding this um drive. And so leaders across Africa must, you know, one, um, you know, engage and agree to have a focus on delivering infrastructure that can support businesses to grow, that can support trade across Africa, that can support movement across Africa, also support the better quality of life we're looking for. Planning long-term is most important for leaders across Africa to ensure that infrastructure can deliver value for Africans and pension funds can invest in infrastructure. Regional planning, regional development. For instance, there's a Vision Um Lagos Road that is gonna enhance businesses across the entire west coast of Africa. Corridor development like the Northern Corridor in East Africa or the Lapset Corridor can also enhance trade, can enhance commerce across Africa, and all these kind of corridor development projects that looks at not just one country but regional development in terms of East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, North Africa, this kind of projects can actually uplift and impact significantly on the people. Because as these regional projects are developed, the subnational projects can also align with that level of development. And so it's important that African leaders look at long-term planning, plan at your national level, plan at subnational level, but also align these plans at regional level infrastructure. If you can have regional level infrastructure, we will improve trade across Africa. We will be able to attract pension funds and look at big ticket projects, that look at long-term projects, that look at climate resilience infrastructure projects. Pension funds can come together to finance such projects. Blended finance can also be attracted to such projects because development finance institutions are looking for such projects that can be there for long term and can achieve long-term impact as well. Not just economic impact, but also social impact. So the biggest aspect of delivering value for Africans through infrastructure is better planning, better alignment of plans, better alignment of regulations, looking at transboundary regulations and laws that can upscale and support the delivery of infrastructure and not impede infrastructure delivery. We've seen projects that have made some very great uh moves for delivery. Um, you know, some years ago we had um presidential infrastructure projects that was um led by South Africa, and all leaders across the regions uh were asked to lead some regional projects. And the the Abidjan Lagos Rook was one of the projects uh that was um led by the president of Nigeria. The president of South Africa also led a project for Southern Africa power development, the power pool. Uh in East Africa, we had Kenya leading projects or transboundary projects. These kind of projects can actually obscale infrastructure, not just at regional level, but also at subnational and national level. And those kind of big ticket projects can attract the level of pension funds we want. They can attract the level of de-risking and the level of guarantees we want to see in projects, but also support sub-national micro and medium-scale enterprises can also grow faster. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

And a quick look at the markets. Iran has reopened the strife of homos to all commercial vessels, ending a seven-week disruption that has upended economies and societies across the globe. This is according to the country's foreign minister. The announcement immediately triggered a tumble in global oil prices, which had spiked as demand outstripped supply across the globe. According to Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Aran Safe, the reopening of the Tride of Homes is contingent on the Israeli-Lebanon ceasefire. Iran sits on the northern coast of the stride and has, for decades, used the threat of Kova at its most important geopolitical level. Whenever Western Nations titans functioned on Tehran, Iranian officials warned that they can't stop the waterway and talk the global economy. The company disclosed in the statement signed by its director of corporate communications or Semi Demi Raw issued on Friday, noting that the effective services previously not eligible for paid subscribers after data found repay on the next week. The new regulations introduced for a compliance and licensing framework for companies providing digital or alternative consumer credit services in Nigeria for the category under which airtime and data advanced airtime and data advanced products may not fall. The affected rules allowed to be tied to this country's meta ones to work screens, which has been central to San's local operations. The layout standard score the concentration risk of facing Kenya's would be effective where a small number of US technology companies account for a significant square of high volume data work. Nairobi has become a key hub for data annotation and content moderation work, which are labor-intensive service intensive services and depending onficial intelligence systems, but contracts can strift abruptly as plans to recalibrate a strategy or to make processes or move work across touristic forms.